Winter 2008 Access Report

Message from the President of The Sallie Mae Fund

Kathleen M. deLaski, president of The Sallie Mae Fund Many of you share our view that awareness of college cannot start too early. We have each heard the stories and have known students who learned too late about the courses they needed to take or parents who missed opportunities to select a more rigorous school for their children. I hope to draw your attention first to the major research project we unveiled before the holidays in partnership with the Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP). IHEP’s study reiterates the importance of instilling a mindset for college in the middle school years. From Aspirations to Action: The Role of Middle School Parents in Making the Dream of College a Reality (PDF, 400KB) reveals that nine out of 10 parents expect their child to go to college — but almost two-thirds of those parents have not started saving money to make that happen. Read more about the report's findings, as well as The Fund’s new saving-for-college resource for parents and students.

The report also summarizes the success of an effective program that The Sallie Mae Fund has supported for 15 years, Kids2College, which demonstrates the importance of “relevancy,” making the connection between aspirations/careers and the college path middle schoolers need to take to live those dreams.

We often find that the greatest service we can provide is to help close the information gap about the cheapest form of financial aid: scholarships. Anything we publish about scholarships flies off the shelves. With that in mind, we supported two new publications this fall for minority students. Latino College Dollars, published by the Tomás Rivera Policy Institute at the University of Southern California, and Black College Dollars, published by the Pell Institute, are proving very popular, each with more than 300 listings of scholarships specifically geared toward Hispanic and African-American students, respectively. Also in the fall, we launched our new online scholarship search where all students can search a free database of billions of dollars in college scholarships. This month, The Fund’s own scholarship programs — which will award $2 million to college-bound students in 2008 — opened for applications. We hope you share these programs with the students and families you counsel.

Finally, our Paying for College Bus Tour, which reached a record 35,000 students and parents in fall 2007, has started its spring journey through the West. See where the bus is going next.

As 2008 gets underway, we know that one of the greatest gifts you can give someone is an open door to higher education. May this year open doors for those you serve.

Kathleen deLaski
President, The Sallie Mae Fund
Kathleen.deLaski@thesalliemaefund.org

Also in this issue of the Access Report: