This study explores the educational backgrounds of low-SES, minority and first generation college students benefitting from the Carolina Covenant program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It specifically focuses on their experiences with the education system beginning in middle school and continuing on into their first year of college. The results provide support for the effectiveness of a need-based financial aid program targeting academically successful low-income students. In addition to providing insight into these student's academic backgrounds, it suggests that by eliminating concern about financial status, colleges and universities can help low income students earn a college degree and do so without compromising the admissions standards of the institution.
The participants in the study were sophomores when they completed an on-line questionnaire that examined their experiences in three main areas. First, the survey explored their experiences with support and encouragement received from family members, school personnel and peers during middle and high school. Second, using the College Choice Process Model as a framework, it examined the path each student took as they developed a predisposition to go to college, assembled the credentials to be admitted and finally secured admittance to a four-year institution. Third, using models developed Tinto and others, it asked students to reflect on their social and academic assimilation during their first year of college.
These questions showed that participants in the study enjoyed strong levels of support and encouragement from all areas and only minimal levels of discouragement. Despite the dire predictions found in much of the literature, Carolina Covenant students are successfully navigating a four-year university. These students received support from both family and school personnel in high school, achieved high levels of academic success in high school and are successfully making the academic and social transition to college life.
Though fundamentally different in many ways from those discussed in this same literature, Carolina Covenant students do come from low-SES backgrounds and are more frequently minority and First Generation College than the general undergraduate student population. In spite of what the literature predicts, these students are being retained at nearly a 97 percent rate.