Giving Compass' Take:

• The Education Writers Association annual seminar culminated in suggestions for ways that higher education institutions can do more to focus and advance the social mobility of their students, especially those that come from low-income backgrounds. 

• How can institutions collaborate through coursework, internship programs, and other ways to increase mobility? How will collaboration of ideas and programs be beneficial for both the students and schools? 

• Read The Hechinger Report's study on which colleges are actually promoting social mobility. 

Dozens of top colleges and universities have more students from the top 1 percent of the income scale than the bottom 60 percent, as The New York Times pointed out last year. And that’s a problem if colleges hope to escape the common critique that they are little more than a finishing school for the elite.

But there are institutions—a lot of them—that have strong track records of improving the socio-economic fortunes of students. If higher education is supposed to be the great equalizer, these institutions—from community colleges to public regional four-year colleges like Cal State and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County—are the ones that are doing the most work.

Last week in Los Angeles, at the Education Writers Association’s annual seminar, I moderated a panel featuring a handful of people who are thinking a lot about the socioeconomic mobility of students, and more fundamentally, the purpose of higher education.

Colleges should be actively recruiting and enrolling low-income students—and that means more than targeting ads to prospective students on social media. It means a commitment to going where they are—areas that a lot of schools do not typically recruit—and demystifying the process of going to college. Then they should be supporting students with resources when the students get to campus—whether it’s writing centers, generous financial aid packages, or simply empathetic academic advisors who perhaps came from low-income backgrounds themselves.

And it is also preparing students for jobs after college and building relationships with businesses that ease the process of finding post-graduation employment for students, especially for those whose parents don’t have their own professional networks.

Read the full article about higher ed can do more for social mobility by Adam Harris  at The Atlantic