Essay: Creating Opportunity Beyond Community College

Author and LaGuardia Community College Adjunct Lecturer Victoria Brown writes:  Everyone loves inspiring, up-by-the-bootstraps academic narratives, stories of successful students who are also ex-convicts or former welfare mothers or persecuted immigrants, and many students who participate in Vassar College's Exploring Transfer program have beaten harrowing odds. But the program's candidates share a less sensational categorization: they hail from a class of families without a college attendance legacy—many, if not all, are the first in their immediate and often extended families to enroll in community college, far less at a prestigious, private institution.