Since its launch in December 2016, the American Talent Initiative (ATI), a Bloomberg Philanthropies effort led by the Aspen Institute’s College Excellence Program and Ithaka S+R, has grown from 30 to 86 member institutions.
With a mission to enroll 50,000 more talented low-and moderate-income students at higher education institutions with strong graduation rates by 2025, ATI shared last week that six member schools have already developed detailed action plans to attract, enroll and support high-achieving, lower-income students.
Yale University, Wake Forest University, the University of Texas at Austin, University of Washington, Georgia Institute of Technology and Elizabethtown College are the first six ATI schools that have made public commitments to support low- and moderate-income students in all facets “before they arrive on campus to graduation and beyond,” ATI officials said in a statement.
“America is the world’s greatest meritocracy, but too often a parent’s income still determines a child’s likelihood of attending a great college,” said Michael R. Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg Philanthropies and former mayor of New York City, in a statement. “The American Talent Initiative is aimed at fixing that, and the program’s momentum is building: More top schools are committing to enrolling more talented students from lower-income families and drawing up concrete action plans to make that happen. Their leadership sets a great example for others.”
A number of strategies outlined in several schools’ action plans aim to improve socioeconomic diversity at these top institutions by identifying and recruiting talented, high-achieving high school graduates and transfer students from community colleges. Some schools will reach out directly to the “neediest families” to increase the number of applications received and the enrollment of Pell-eligible and first-generation students.
Joshua Wyner, founder and executive director of Aspen Institute’s College Excellence Program, said that the “50,000 additional students” goal builds on the research of Dr. Caroline M. Hoxby, who found that a vast majority of very high-achieving students who are low-income do not apply to any selective higher education institutions.
“Even under the standards that the colleges are using today to admit students… top colleges and universities are missing huge amounts of talent in the country that they could enroll,” Wyner said, adding that these lower-income students “have the academic profiles to excel at the top colleges.”
