College Access and Success

Walking into Mary Gates Hall (MGH) — home to First Year Programs, Undergraduate Academic Affairs (UAA) Advising, the University Honors Program and the Center for Experiential Learning and Diversity — University of Washington students might come across a group tutoring session or the annual Undergraduate Research Symposium.

While more students of all backgrounds are aspiring to and enrolling in college, completion rates have remained stagnant, with approximately 40 percent of students who enter 4-year colleges never completing their degrees.

As a teacher at a high-poverty high school in Brooklyn, Julia Duncheon all-too-often saw her school’s top students go on to college yet encounter roadblocks that kept them from completing their degrees.

University of Washington faculty member Thomas Halverson discussed the need to create alternative career pathways for students beyond "college prep" during a recent YouTube Live chat.

Far too often, high-achieving underrepresented students graduate from high school and end up attending colleges that don’t offer learning opportunities commensurate with their academic profiles and potential.

This phenomenon, known as “undermatch,” results in more high-achieving minority students attending institutions with lower completion rates and can reduce these underrepresented students’ opportunities to realize their dreams and close persistent wealth gaps between different populations. 

The state of Washington is attacking the college affordability issue on multiple fronts and making progress in preparing more of its own residents to obtain higher-paying jobs, contends Professor William Zumeta of the University of Washington College of Education in a new commentary piece published by The Conversation.

In high schools across the United States, an almost singular focus on preparing students for traditional 4-year college degree programs fails to serve the majority of students argues University of Washington faculty member Thomas Halverson.

On July 30, Halverson will discuss how school systems can better support the diversity of students’ skills, interests and passions during a live chat starting at 11:30 a.m. Pacific on the College's YouTube Live channel.

In a phenomena known as “summer melt,” many high school graduates plan to pursue higher education, but something derails them over the summer.

“They get confused, they don’t know how to fill something out, and then they don’t show up to their first day, and don’t show up for the rest of the year,” Natalia Esquivel - Silva (BA '18) explained.

It’s a chain of events that throws off the plans of many young people, with lifelong consequences.

As a student at Tacoma's Lincoln High School, Dylan Tran expected his Advanced Placement World History course to provide him with multiple stories and perspectives of human history. But from the first page of the textbook, he felt like something critical was missing.

After looking over the list of authors, Tran noticed the ten authors were all white and seven were male. And, over the course of the year, Tran remembers that most of the course topics were focused on the experiences of whites in Europe and the United States.

The benefits of study abroad are well documented, from increased confidence to an expanded worldview — and college students who study abroad are more likely to do better in school and graduate on time.

But that experience is often unattainable for a particular group of students: men of color. Of the more than 300,000 U.S. undergraduates who study abroad each year, an overwhelming majority are white women.

For students at the University of Washington, the Brotherhood Initiative wants to help level the field.