The White House is asking participants in next week’s higher-education summit to commit to taking concrete steps to help more low-income students enroll in and complete college.
In an email sent to invitees late last month, James R. Kvaal, deputy director of the Domestic Policy Council, asked college leaders to come armed with “at least one new commitment that would make quantifiable progress towards helping more low-income students succeed.”
“The goal of this December event is not simply to have a conference,” he wrote, “but instead to mobilize new action that makes significant, meaningful progress.”
An attachment to the email lists 20 steps colleges might offer to take, including expanding efforts to recruit and retain low-income students; teaming up with school districts to provide counseling, test preparation, and financial-aid advice; and remaking remediation to help more students advance to credit-bearing courses more quickly.
In the message, Mr. Kvaal stressed that the list is “certainly not comprehensive” and added that the Obama administration welcomed other ideas.
“We know there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach,” he wrote.
The summit, scheduled for Wednesday, comes on the heels of an October meeting in which roughly a dozen college presidents met with White House officials to discuss efforts to encourage more high-achieving, low-income students to apply to top colleges. That meeting included discussion of “undermatching,” in which such students rarely apply to elite colleges even though they would probably be accepted at those institutions.
Since then, the first lady, Michelle Obama, has taken up the cause, telling students at a local high school here that more high-achieving students from low-income families should attend college. The day she delivered that speech, in mid-November, six university presidents met at the White House with Gene B. Sperling, director of the National Economic Council and assistant to the president on economic policy, to discuss the same issue.
According to Mr. Kvaal’s email, a team of four administration officials—Secretary of Education Arne Duncan; Cecilia Muñoz, director of the Domestic Policy Council; Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to President Obama; and Mr. Kvaal—has been meeting since January to explore what the administration might do to improve access to higher education.
In addition to college leaders, the summit will include representatives of the private sector, city and state governments, and philanthropic organizations. The conversation is likely to be wide-ranging, but one controversial topic isn’t on the agenda: Mr. Obama’s college-ratings plan. According to the email, the White House is “not intending to announce any further steps on the ratings as part of this convening.”
