Savvy Students Get the Guidance

A recent survey from Inside Higher Ed and College Pulse found that student mentors in college have provided everything from career advice to advice on course selection to guidance on navigating student life. However, not all students have equal access to, or even know how to seek out, such relationships.

In fact, Anthony Abraham Jack, a junior fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows and an assistant professor in the Harvard Graduate School of Education, notes that the “doubly disadvantaged student,” from a low-income household who is entering college from local distressed public high school, may well have been told “just keep your head down and do good work.” To these students, mentorship seems like the “wrong way to get ahead,” he adds. “They are more tasked with maintaining order than making connections.” Even when those connections could help them succeed both in college and beyond.

Read more on the study’s results here.