Nicole Hurd Discusses College Access Gaps with Charlie Rose
Charlie Rose recently invited Nicole Hurd, founder and CEO of College Advising Corps, to discuss increasing access to higher education opportunities. College Advising Corps places recent college graduates in under-served high schools to help low-income students navigate the often intimidating college application and financial aid processes. The Jack Kent Cooke Foundation was an early lead funder of the organization, which has now sent more than 500 advisers to serve 160,000 students.
“Our counselor-student ratio is about 488:1, which means that the average student gets about 20 minutes a year with a counselor,” noted Nicole. “Our global competitiveness and our democracy depend on having educated, bright, amazing young people out there.”
Nicole remarks that “only three percent of students in the top 137 colleges in this country are from the bottom economic quarter – three percent. Where’s the opportunity?”
“We need to make sure … that we push all these great young students into these schools and that these universities step up and admit them and get the financial aid to make that happen.”