It is great to encourage low-income students to go to college. But what if they fail to complete their first year? What is the difference in persistence between college-bound students and those who don’t? A new study found that students who are engaged in meaningful internships as high school students have a higher persistence rate than their peers.
“Once students experience professional success while in high school, continuing on a path to a lifetime of low-wage occupations is no longer an option, so when the going gets tough in college, they stay determined to succeed,”Rafael Alvarez (Founder and CEO Genesys Works), said:www.genesysworks.org
Genesys WorksIt is a 501c3 nonprofit organization with offices in Houston, Texas, Chicago (Ill.) and Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minn. provides high school seniors from underprivileged schools with meaningful internships at Fortune 500 companies and other large corporations. Genesys Works data and Houston Independent Schools District data were used by researchers at The University of Texas at Dallas to review and analyze the effects of Genesys Works’ internship program on students’ persistence after graduation.
According to the study, 92 percent of program completions pursued college education. 86 percent stayed on after their first year. This compares to peers at the same schools who went on to college 50 percent and 41 percent respectively.
These results indicate that Genesys Works could be a solution to the national problem of students not completing their college education.
This is in support of two reports by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which claim that vocational education, which combines formal education with actual work experience, is an effective way to learn that goes beyond classroom education. Harvard Graduate School of Education released the Pathways to Prosperity Study. “if we could develop an American strategy to engage educators and employers in a more collaborative approach to the education and training of the next generation of workers, it would surely produce important social as well as economic returns on investment.”
“Given that this is precisely what Genesys Works is trying to accomplish, the findings of this report lend support to the argument that programs like this are likely to yield high returns,”Dr. Nidhi Mehrotra is the lead investigator of the University of Texas Dallas project.
