New Approaches to Promoting College Access for More Americans

For most of its history, America has been a nation of opportunity where even those born into the least well-off families can improve their circumstances. As income inequality continues to grow in the United States, however, many are concerned that widening differences in economic opportunities across households are creating barriers to upward social mobility. Education has often served as a path to better economic outcomes and new evidence identifies promising ways to help lower-income students improve their educational opportunities. These policies vary in size and scope, and differ dramatically in cost. In this article, the authors provide insights about new low-cost interventions that target high-achieving, low-income students may offer a game-changing approach that not only increases enrollment rates among these students, but does so at better schools that provide a better foundation for upward mobility.