Drive Seeks to Ease Minority College Path

Of the roughly 5.5 million high school-senior African Americans and Latinos who failed to go on to college last year--and will pay the price in lower incomes and lost opportunities for the rest of their lives--many were not held back by bad grades or low test scores or even by the fact that they are poor.

And, while those factors are important, many education leaders are convinced that significant numbers of minority and low-income students who could do college work have wildly exaggerated ideas about how much higher education costs and do not believe that it could happen for them.

Now, a consortium of about 1,200 colleges and universities, including UCLA, USC and 70 other public and private schools in California, are joining forces to debunk what they see as the myth that college is beyond the reach of many minorities and families with low incomes.

“The fact of the matter is that every student in America who works hard and makes the grade has lots of choices about where they go to college, how much they want to pay and the ways in which they finance their college studies,” Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley said Tuesday in helping launch the “College Is Possible” campaign.

“A college education, unfortunately, is not cost-free. But it’s far less costly than many believe. And for all motivated Americans there is another cost to consider: the cost of not going to college,” said C. Peter McGrath, president of the National Assn. of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges.

“A college education is the best single investment anyone can make,” McGrath said.

To provide more accurate information and get it to students and their families in time to make a difference, many participating colleges plan to establish links with local high schools and middle schools. The group also has set up a Web site and a toll-free number at the Department of Education (800-433-3243). The Web site is: https://www.CollegeIsPossible.org.

They will offer information on costs, financial aid, sources of assistance and what students should do to prepare themselves for college.

Economic, social and cultural factors play enormous roles in influencing decisions about education, beginning in middle school or even earlier. But leaders of the new campaign argue that such factors would be easier to overcome if more students believed college was within their reach.

There is “a great deal of anxiety, a great deal of fear and a great deal of exaggeration of the barriers” to higher education, said Stanley O. Ikenberry, president of the American Council on Education, which is spearheading the drive.

Although college costs rose sharply in the 1980s and early 1990s and paying for college remains one of the largest financial outlays a typical American family ever makes, the growth in costs has slowed. And recent studies show that many Americans substantially overestimate the price tag for higher education. Many also underestimate the availability of financial aid, which now tops $60 billion a year.

Such misinformation is particularly widespread among minorities and lower-income families, according to studies by the Department of Education and the education council, an umbrella organization representing American colleges and universities.

In a survey by the education council released earlier this year, for example, a representative sample of Americans estimated in-state tuition at four-year public colleges to average $9,694 a year. The actual average tuition at such schools is $2,848, the council said. Indeed, the vast majority of all college students attend schools at which annual tuition is less than $3,000.

Estimates by blacks and Latinos were even more pronounced. So were their doubts about the availability of financial aid from federal, state and school sources.

Overall, African Americans were 83% more likely than whites to think college was not affordable and Latinos were 79% more likely to hold such beliefs, the study showed.

These convictions are echoed in college attendance figures. In 1996, the last year for which data is available, the Census Bureau reported that 36.2% of the almost 19.7 million whites between the ages of 18 and 24 were attending college.

However, only 27% of the 3.6 million blacks in that college-age group were in college. And just 20.1% of the 3.5 million college-age Latinos were pursuing higher education.

“The money is there to help you go,” said Jackie King, a researcher at the educational council. “What we’re trying to get past is the attitude, the feeling that college ‘seems like it is not for people like us.’ ”