Higher Ed Needs to Show Up

When it comes to building connections with our communities, institutions of higher education have the resources to do this well, but we don’t show up in ways that put communities first. There are plenty of precollege programs offered by colleges and universities -- though these are often developed with a higher ed-centric approach and without real investment in the communities we seek to serve.

For 30 years, I have worked as an administrator, teacher and coach, and as a Black man in the education, government and nonprofit sectors. I’ve learned a lot about what it takes to get young people access to good colleges, both how to prepare academically and how to pay for it.

I’ve come to understand that there are three main factors influencing the student experience that function like a three-legged stool. One leg represents the students and their families, one leg is schools and community-based organizations that they are a part of, and the third leg is the colleges and universities themselves. These three legs comprise the optimal support system for students to reach college, and they can be easily thrown out of balance if one of the legs is uneven. Unfortunately, these supports are not often coordinated, nor are they equally yoked.

Two of these legs -- students/families and schools and community-based organizations -- don’t always feel the link to higher education, particularly for first-generation college-going students and their families and communities. It is much more difficult for them to seek out college preparation programs, understand the offerings and pay for them. The stool is lopsided and unsteady. We -- the higher education community -- can help stabilize the stool simply by showing up.

So, what does it mean to show up? It means for higher education to promote pathways that open up the lines of communication with families, K-12 schools and local communities, especially those most underresourced. It means actively engaging communities rather than passively hoping that they will discover us.

At New York University, we have an undergraduate admissions pipeline team that engages, promotes and supports precollege opportunities -- both internal and external to NYU. To do this work properly, we first meet people where they are so we can build better access to our precollege programs for historically marginalized and first-time college-going communities. We then work toward creating, administering and evaluating programs that span academic and social readiness for college. And finally, we do our best to share the learnings, feedback and replicable ideas with teams across admissions and our individual schools in order to present a unified voice in assessing and preparing applicants.

When using a community-first point of view to develop high-quality college preparation programming, institutions begin to dismantle educational injustices. This work allows us to understand students’ communities and what supports they need so that when we show up at high schools, community-based organizations and houses of worship, etc., our message truly resonates with students and their families.

Three big ideas directly correlate to the stability of our three-legged stool: listening, learning and leveraging resources.

1. Listen. To build meaningful collaborations with schools, community-based programs and families, higher education must listen, especially now in the midst of the economic and social consequences of COVID-19 as students are more anxious than ever about affording and attending college. We must first understand exactly what academic, college readiness and college preparation programs underresourced communities need the most.

For example, at NYU, our Community College Transfer Opportunity Program (CCTOP) provides targeted assistance to students transferring from community colleges into NYU. Our first step through CCTOP is to work with our community college partners to hear what exactly their students need to get to and through NYU. We help with pretransfer credit evaluation, and we conduct information sessions specifically tailored to what community college students identify as their largest barriers to four-year universities. We can then tell them what they can expect when they transition to NYU, because we spend the time listening to what they need to know.

Our College Access Leadership Institute (CALI) works to empower rising juniors and seniors in high school with the tools and skills they need to master the college application process. Participating students then act as mentors and advisers in their high schools and community-based organizations by conducting their very own college application workshops. Through the 10 years of running CALI, we’ve listened to the feedback from hundreds of students and high school guidance counselors about what they need, even as those needs have evolved.

2. Learn. Higher education institutions have a wealth of knowledge right under our noses that can assist admissions pipeline and recruitment teams to expand their impact and improve outreach. At NYU alone, we have more than 175 university programs across our three degree-granting campuses in New York City, Abu Dhabi and Shanghai. These run the gamut from middle and high school academic programs, programs for visiting students, and adult noncredit courses. We must continuously examine the pedagogy behind these offerings, their effectiveness, and distill the approaches and data for others across our system to utilize.

3. Leverage resources. By offering a range of precollege readiness and academic programming, we can leverage our resources to directly address the gaps that families and schools experience.

As major research universities, we have academic departments wholly dedicated to studying what leads to student success. The rich information that comes from the work of our faculty is a guide for what and how to communicate with students in the earlier stages of their journey toward higher education. That is something that only higher ed can provide, and it has to be shared with others.

In terms of academic offerings, take the NYU Tandon School of Engineering’s Applied Research Innovations in Science and Engineering (ARISE) program, which has graduated over 300 high school students. It’s a free program for 10th- and 11th-grade New York City students.

One resource NYU has in abundance are recent college graduates, many of whom serve in the NYU College Advising Corps. This program is managed in partnership with the national College Advising Corps organization, whose goal is to increase the number of low-income, first-generation and underrepresented students entering and completing postsecondary education. In the NYU chapter, corps members are placed in area high schools full-time to work with high school students on college searches, financial planning and the application process.

But there’s so much more we could be doing. What about robust college preparation programming for parents and guardians, particularly around financial education? Or connecting our faculty to area high schools to teach master classes in those high schools (once it is safe to do so), rather than only inviting students to come to us for our on-campus programs? We need to be innovative with how we strengthen each leg of the stool.

When we tighten the threads that weave together the entire pre-K-20 pipeline, we begin to break down access issues in higher education. All colleges and universities claim they want to attract academically strong, talented and diverse students. But rather than wondering why students don’t apply, or complaining when they come to campus unprepared, we need to start early, build trust in communities and invest in giving students and their families the tools they need to both compete and succeed. We can’t afford to sit back. It’s time that we show up.