Educational Opportunity: The TRIO Program

A healthy and secure community is concerned with the educational preparation of its citizens. It wants a fit between the capabilities of its citizens and the demands of its business and social environment. It prepares them to succeed. In Jefferson County our community health depends  on securing college educations for high school graduates. But college entry and success in college depends not just on having a good educational background in elementary and high school, it also demands social and family support for college goers.

College is a different, more demanding environment than high school. College gives students more flexibility. It’s not required by law to attend and it gives students a broad choice in what they want to study. But it demands more of students, something that takes getting used to. For students without a family history to lend them guidance in what to expect and how to engage, it can be difficult to get over that hump.

The West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission has declared the state to be lagging in its goal to have 60% of the state adults by 2030 reach success in some higher education program. In Jefferson County at the end of the 2023-24 school year, only 43% of the population had made it. That’s a long climb.

The state has long realized that we have to provide not just encouragement to attend some higher education program, but to also help students stay in college when they make the decision to go. This question of having help in place is particularly critical for first-generation students, those whose parents have not attended college themselves. It’s hard to get an accurate number of how many freshman students are first-generation, but a national statistic has it about 30%. It’s likely higher in our state.

One of the programs that’s been successful in tackling this problem of keeping first-generation students in school has been the TRIO program, a grant program run by the U.S. Department of Education. TRIO has two components, both of which have been operating out of Shepherd University for a decade. One program is aimed at high schoolers to motivate and prepare them to go to college. The other assists college students to stay in the program and graduate on time.

According to Evora Baker, the Director of TRIO at Shepherd, the program has been consistently effective. In the 2023-24 school year, for example, the high school program, which primarily operates in the Berkeley County Public Schools, had a 100% success rate in graduating students, 77% of whom went on to enroll in colleges. For that same year, 90% of participating students in the college program at Shepherd persisted in their college education, and 54% graduated on time. The national average for the last statistic is more than 20 points lower. TRIO works.

So why then is the TRIO program, which by the way has Shelley Moore Capito, our senator in Washington, as one of its main supporters, facing an uncertain future? The program was highlighted in the current government funding proposal for elimination. No waste, no fraud, no abuse. Just success.

Even if TRIO ultimately does survive, whoever thought it should be cut does not understand how to build a healthy community. You can know for sure that they were not Democrats.

Jim Bauman