Giving Compass' Take:
- This report shares critical points on how boosting social capital can help high school students transition into college to attain better educational outcomes.
- What are the barriers to gaining social capital for some students?
- Read more on fostering youth social capital and career planning.
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Relationships are often valuable as a means to achieving important goals, such as employment, housing, or education: The power of who you know goes a long way. Scholars often refer to these networks and relationships as social capital. As Camille Busette and her co-authors write in their Brookings report, “How We Rise: How social networks impact economic mobility”:
“Social networks, providing access to support, information, power, and resources, are a critical and often neglected element of opportunity structures. Social capital matters for mobility.”
- Social capital = relationships that uplift.
- Social capital can improve educational outcomes.
- Programs are using social capital to boost opportunity.
- Some of the key lessons of these programs are that both bridging and bonding social capital have a role to play, with families acting as important accelerators (or brakes) on student opportunities and mentors from different backgrounds providing wider network opportunities.
- Social capital is an overlooked factor in policy efforts to promote opportunity.
Read the full article about building social capital by Richard V. Reeves and Beyond Deng at Brookings.