READY FOR COLLEGE

An important study last spring by the Senator George Mitchell Scholarship Research Institute showed that too many Maine high school students do not go to college not for reasons often cited – lack of money and lack of aspirations – but because they have not taken the many specific steps necessary for them to be ready to go after high school graduation. On today’s op-ed page, Lisa Plimpton, director of research at the institute, offers parents and students a rough time line to highlight the needed steps.

Money and aspirations count plenty, of course, but as Ms. Plimpton’s list shows, lots of other things do, too. For instance, telling children early on about college and having them visit local colleges to see a sports event or attend a festival helps to make college seem like a normal place to go – nothing scary there. Parents who attend open houses at school, who participate in or attend school events and meet with teachers are showing their children that their educations are important. By taking active roles in finding the most appropriate and challenging courses and following their children’s progress through a semester, parents can help their children achieve in courses where they otherwise might not.

The Mitchell study, called “Barriers to Postsecondary Education in Maine,” surveyed more than 2,500 Maine high school students, teachers, young adults and parents. The work did not provide many new answers generally, but revealed several insights into what needed to be done specifically to encourage more people to attend college. The most important part of the report might be summarized like this: Especially for first-generation potential college students and especially for students not in honors classes, what is missing in Maine families is the practical awareness among students and their parents to take the needed high school courses, save for college, find the scholarships, search for and select preferred colleges, arrange for campus visits, get the applications, write the essays, etc. For people who have been to college, many of these steps are obvious; for those who have not, the steps are the difference between a student going or not going to college.

The Mitchell study makes 10 college-going suggestions in addition to today’s op-ed, including simple ideas like occasionally shifting guidance counselors’ hours to later in the day so parents have more opportunity to meet with them; asking community members to help guide students through the college-application process and beyond; encouraging colleges to do more to bring young students on campus to make their hypothetical ideas about college concrete. And then there is the money end.

Notice under Ms. Plimpton’s list that saving for college begins in the birth-to-age-5 category. It can start small: $50 in a NextGen account that the state will match with another $200 for families that qualify. College-saving payments are like car or house payments; if you can set aside a small amount on a regular schedule, month after month, year after year, it will provide a child with a financial means for college. But trying to make those payments all at once can drive a family deeply in debt.

One of the notable features of the timeline by Ms. Plimpton is the number of Internet sources to which it refers. College information and the colleges themselves (as Princeton and Yale recently showed) are online more thoroughly than most places. To learn about the wide range of areas of study, scholarships and help in choosing a college, the Internet provides far more than will fit on a newspaper page. On the other hand, clipping out the time line and sticking it on the refrigerator would provide a daily reminder of the shared task of preparing a child for college.