Higher Education Opportunity Program
The Arthur O. Eve Higher Education Opportunity Program, commonly known as HEOP is a program dedicated to help economically and educationally disadvantaged students in the state of New York established by the passing of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 which was approved by Governor Rockefeller. The purpose is to provide services to students who wouldn’t have been able to attend college because of their economic and educational background. HEOP works with the New York State Department of Education and individual colleges to make sure students go to and graduate from college. There are currently, 58 higher education institutions that receive funding for their own HEOP and was initially awarded to 9,738 students in the late 1960’s. Unfortunately, the number of those student receiving these helps currently, is not available which adds to the problem of availability and transparency.
Once students are admitted they not only receive economic help but services that may aid their mental health, educational needs and social outreach. Services include: a pre-enrollment Summer Program, Remedial and Developmental Courses, Tutorial Services and Counseling Services for academic, personal and career needs.
In order to be considered and accepted into the program a student must:
-Have been a resident of New York State for one year preceding your term of entry into HEOP.
-Possess a high school diploma or a State-approved equivalency diploma (with a composite score not higher than 3100) or its equivalent.
-Be educationally disadvantaged. An educationally disadvantaged student is a student who otherwise would not be accepted as a matriculated student under the institution’s normal admissions standards in the degree program for which application is made.
-Have the potential and motivation for successful completion of college.
-Be economically disadvantaged.
In 2013 The NY State Budget allocated $24,996,040 for HEOP. HEOP awards usually depends on the amount of funds that the state has available. Individual institutions are also required to match at least 15% of the grant with their own resources.[2]
In the end, HEOP could be considered as New York’s best kept secret for disadvantaged students in the state since not all of them are aware of its existence.
Franklin and Marshall College (F&M) differts from the three programs mentioned before, as it is a private co-ed four year liberal arts college in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. With a strict admissions rate and located in a rural setting this college had suffered through a large lack of diversity in its numbers but in 2014, they decided to change that.
They cut most of all their merit based aid and decide to replace that with need-based aid, along with supporting services for their students. F&M has spent over $43,000,000 in need based aid which is awarded through grants and scholarships. Some services they offer are in a
combination of programs and working with other institutions like the Posse Foundation.
F&M now offers: Pre-College Prep & Outreach — College Prep— National College Advising Corps - Keystone Region, Open House, Fly-in, Visit — Multicultural Overnight Diplomat Experience (MODE), — Collegiate Leadership Summit, Scholarship & Financial Aid — Posse University Partner, The William H. Gray Scholarship Program, Student Life & Support — The Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMCA). With all of these combined F&M is making sure to cover all the bases of challenges that these admitted and potential underrepresented students might face.
In order to a student to qualify for these need students have to make sure to be able to make it through the admissions process. After, need-based aid will be awarded depending of that students family income.
Thanks to these initiatives more than half of the students at F&M received some sort of need-based aid and F&M has increased the proportion of their Pell Grants up to 10% as compared to their three year average six years ago.
Our Expert: Jacques Steinberg
Vice-President of Communications Say Yes to Education
We sat down with Jacques Steinberg from Say Yes to Education to find out more on what are the difficulties that low-income students face and why programs like Say Yes to Education have been implemented.
What can low-income students do to achieve a degree in higher education?
With the impact income has on students in higher education, more programs have emerged to help level the playing field. They vary from national initiatives, statewide programs, to an individual institution’s financial aid distribution. These are programs dedicated in helping those with low-income backgrounds to earn a college degree. They differ in the type of impact they have and what they do in order to meet these goals.
Say Yes to Education was founded in 1987 by George Weiss, who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, and went on to become a money manager who decided to initially pay for 112 Belmont Elementary School at an inner city neighborhood of Philadelphia, students’ college tuition if they graduated high school. After this first initiative, Weiss decided to create a bigger program that would tackle the disadvantages that those kids may face first from places that have personally impacted him and later on all ver the country.
As of 2013, Say Yes to Education is in 21 different states plus Washington DC and in around 100 private colleges. Their mission is to offer services for children from Kindergarten-12 grade in public schools in Say Yes Community Partners. Services can vary from tutoring, after school programming; summer camp; school-based medical care and counseling; advice on college admissions, and financial aid; transportation services and free legal assistance.
But one service that stands out and addresses disadvantages faced by low-income students is their ability to provide public high school graduates in Say Yes communities scholarships covering the full cost of tuition to any in-state public college or university. They can also do the same for students applying to any of the Say Yes partner institutions as long as their annual family income is at or below $75,000. For those of who also want to go to one of those institutions but their family income is higher than $75,000 they may be eligible to receive annual grants, from the organization itself, of up to $5,000.
Say Yes to Education has raised more than $43 million dollars in their Syracuse chapter and given out more than $2.5 million in Say Yes scholarships over three years. As a result, the national program, has more than 135,000 [1] students from across the nation that can achieve their goal of attending college without worrying on how their personal family income can affect them regarding those decisions.
TRIO
TRIO is a combination of nine different federally funded programs. Their mission is to help low-income, economically disadvantaged, first-generation and students with disabilities to obtain a college degree. The Educational Opportunity Act of 1964, was the first national college access initiative that was started with the establishment of a tentative program called Upward Bound. Followed by Talent Search and Special Services for Disadvantaged Students in 1965 and 1968 respectively.
Five more programs were included by 1998 catering to a wider variety of students, displaced workers, and veterans. The whole list of programs include:
TRIO is now located in more than 1,000 colleges, universities, community colleges, and agencies now offer TRIO Programs in America, the Caribbean, and the Pacific Islands.
Funds are distributed to individual institutions and then are awarded through competitive grants. In order to be eligible Students must be enrolled or accepted for enrollment into a degree program at a university offering SSS projects and be a low-income student who is first generation and students with disabilities who show academic need. The student must also come from a family whose income is 150% or less of the federal poverty level and in which neither parent graduated from college.
With all the different varieties of programs and having the advantage of being federally funded TRIO has received $46,925,156 million in TRIO Educational Opportunity Centers (EOC) program grants to 128 grantees in 44 states, as well as Puerto Rico in 2011 which have reached around 790,000 low-income, first-generation students and students with disabilities across the nation.
How Does Each Match Up?
Below there are different charts comparing each program mentioned above
Even though all of the opportunities sound very helpful and advantageous. One major problem of all of these programs is their lack of access and outreach. A lot of students graduating from high school often lack the knowledge of even knowing the existence of any of these programs or do not understand the process of financial aid which leads to high numbers of student debt, low college retention rates and many not attending college at all.
[1] Numbers calculated by adding the total amount of students of each cohort/chapter