Medford/Somerville, Mass. — The Jack Kent Cooke Foundation today awarded a $1 million grant to Tufts University and Massachusetts Campus Compact (MACC) as part of a nationwide initiative aimed at significantly increasing college enrollment and graduation among low-income high school and community college students.

Following in the tradition of the Americorps*VISTA and Teach for America programs, the College Advising Corps initiative will recruit and train Tufts seniors to work full time as advisers for one to two years following graduation. Tufts University’s Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service and MACC will develop this College Advising Corps to increase college enrollment rates of high-achieving, low-income high school students in Massachusetts.

The program will provide one-on-one advising to 2,250 students over four years, serving an additional 6,010 in group settings. The Tufts/MACC program is based on a successful model devised by the University of Virginia and funded by the Foundation.

The goal is to combat staggering rates of college-qualified, low-income high school graduates who fail to earn bachelor’s degrees by providing college admission and financial aid guidance to disadvantaged students. The U.S. Department of Education estimates that four million potential college degree recipients have been “lost” during the past two decades. As the Foundation’s research reveals, among these students are many of America’s top-performing, lower-income students.

“We are squandering a huge national resource when millions of America’s best high school graduates never get to college, or fail to advance beyond a two-year community college program,” said Foundation Executive Director Matthew J. Quinn. “Our Foundation is committed to addressing the college enrollment gap by providing crucial information to promising students facing financial barriers.”

Lack of information about admissions and financial aid is a significant barrier to college for low- income students — who are much less likely than their counterparts in wealthy communities to have access to SAT preparation, college application guidance and information about financial aid. On average there is only one high school counselor for every 488 American public high school students.

“Education should not be a luxury for the privileged few,” said Tufts President Lawrence S. Bacow. “This program will change the lives of thousands of Massachusetts students who currently lack the information and support they need to succeed.”

MACC, hosted at Tufts since 1995, is a network of colleges and universities working together to promote initiatives that develop the civic engagement skills of students, build partnerships with the community, and integrate civic engagement with teaching and research.

Tisch College provides Tufts graduate and undergraduate students across all disciplines and schools with tools needed for a lifetime of active citizenship. In addition to supporting more than 200 courses that engage students in citizenship and service, the College offers programming to support student initiatives and develop leadership capacity, faculty fellowships to fund research and curriculum development, and student summer research and internships.

“MACC, Tufts and Tufts’ Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service have successfully partnered in many statewide and national programs, such as a student forum on poverty, regional and national conferences, and training workshops,” said Barbara Canyes, MACC Executive Director. “The College Advising Corps takes advantage of this history of collaboration and leverages the strengths and resources of each organization to provide a model program that will serve as a replicable framework for other states and universities.”

The groundbreaking “College Guide” program, funded by the Foundation at the University of Virginia, places recent college graduates in communities where college-going rates are below the state average, to help students plan for and complete the college application process. This program was recently expanded to include counseling for community college students interested in transferring to four-year institutions. Recent Cooke Foundation-funded research also underscores the importance of personal transfer counseling for low-income students who attend community college and the need to increase transfer advising on community college campuses.

“This innovative approach has succeeded in Virginia with notable increases in applications to colleges in high schools were the guides work,” said Josh Wyner, Vice-President of Programs for the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation. “At one Virginia high school, we saw a 23 percent jump in the college admissions acceptance rate.”

“Now low-income students in Massachusetts will get access to much-needed guidance from mentors fresh out of college who can really inspire them,” he added.

The other grant recipients are Brown University, Franklin and Marshall College, Loyola College in Maryland, Pennsylvania State University, the University of Alabama, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Missouri, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Utah. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in partnership with the National College Access Network, will also create a National College Advising Corps Coordinating Office to support the development of the grants and encourage other universities to start similar programs.

Tufts University, located on three Massachusetts campuses in Boston, Medford/Somerville, and Grafton, and in Talloires, France, is recognized among the premier research universities in the United States. Tufts enjoys a global reputation for academic excellence and for the preparation of students as leaders in a wide range of professions. A growing number of teaching and research initiatives span all Tufts campuses, and collaboration among the faculty and students in the undergraduate, graduate and professional programs across the University’s eight schools is widely encouraged.

Massachusetts Campus Compact is a statewide coalition of 66 college and university presidents who are committed to fulfilling the civic purposes of higher education. MACC is part of a network of a 31 other state Campus Compact offices.

The Jack Kent Cooke Foundation is a private, independent foundation established in 2000 by the estate of Jack Kent Cooke to help young people of exceptional promise reach their full potential through education. It focuses in particular on students with financial need. The Foundation’s programs include scholarships to undergraduate, graduate and high school students, and grants to organizations that serve high-achieving students with financial need.