Persist: Near-peer coaching’s impact in closing the college completion gap

There is an increasingly urgent gap between the college degree aspirations of students from low-income backgrounds and their degree attainment. Significant social and financial pressures have hit higher education leaders, creating new urgency for proven options to close this degree divide.

Here's what we know: More than 30 percent of all enrolled college students come from low-income backgrounds.1 Despite significant investment in on- and off-campus persistence and retention programming by colleges and universities, too many of these students continue to be left behind as they graduate at rates far lower than their higher-income peers.

Today, the degree divide is stark. Students from higher-income households are more than twice as likely to graduate college as their peers from lower-income households. Forecasts indicate that this trend may become even more dire as a direct result of the coronavirus pandemic.

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