Office of Planning & Budgeting
January 21, 2014
News Roundup on “Increasing College Opportunity” Initiative
As you may have heard, President Obama recently announced his “Increasing College Opportunity for Low-Income Students” initiative, which aims to help more low-income and underrepresented minority students attend and complete college. On January 16th, the White House hosted a summit of the more than 100 colleges, universities, nonprofits, and foundations that made commitments to increase college opportunity. The Chronicle provides a detailed, sortable list of these commitments.
News coverage of the summit and the initiative includes the following:
- UW Today’s article “UW commits to White House plan to help more students afford college“ gives an overview of the UW’s commitments and highlights how the UW already has many achievements related to the provision of accessible degrees to students of all economic backgrounds.
- The Seattle Times published “State college presidents offer up ideas at White House summit,” which focuses on the efforts and commitments of three Washington colleges who were invited to the summit to share lessons from their campuses—Lake Washington Institute of Technology, University of Puget Sound, and Tacoma Community College. The UW is not mentioned.
- The Chronicle put out an article titled, “Critics say White House summit sidelined community colleges.” It comments on the important role community colleges play in improving access and notes the dearth of community college participants at the summit.
- The Chronicle also published a piece called “College leaders leave White House summit inspired to act”. The article notes many optimistic comments made by participants. But it also discusses the composition of summit participants and, again, remarks upon the imbalance between elite four-years and community colleges.
- And lastly, Inside Higher Ed’s article “White House convenes summit on helping low-income college students” gives a thorough description of the summit events and describes, in a relatively balanced way, discusses both the praises and criticisms of participants and observers.