Locals to Receive Free Tuition
BY JOHN BYRNE

One of the conundrums facing institutions of higher education in recent years has been maintaining solid community relations. Seeking to ameliorate relations between the College and the city schools, the board of trustees recently took a leap forward and endorsed a plan to provide full tuition to all four-year seniors graduating from Oberlin High School who are accepted into the College or Conservatory. Oberlin joins Clark University in Worcester, Mass.; Union College in Schnectedy, N.Y. and Syracuse University in this endeavor.
“We hope it will serve throughout children’s educations to help raise the general level of expectation and ambition and making real the possible of the prospect of a free education in a leading institution of higher education,” said College President Nancy Dye.
Elaine Carlin, assistant superintendent and interim principal at Prospect Elementary, concurred, saying, “You’ve got the prestige of Oberlin College and the challenge from the town; the prospect of [a scholarship] will raise their expectations for a lot of our kids.”
Carlin recently devised a long range plan aimed at improving the Oberlin public schools after the Oberlin’s schools were ranked as being in “academic emergency” by the state. Paramount to the task of improving the schools has been raising the level of achievement on state-wide proficiency tests. She declined to predict whether the scholarship will immediately raise scores, but said that it may raise the bar over time. 
“I imagine it will [raise scores] in the long run just because there will be more of a desire to accomplish and not just become part of the crowd,” she said.
Dye said the idea had surfaced not long after the Schools-College Partnership was conceived, and that she had engaged both members of the College and those in the community, including clergy and leaders in the schools, before bringing it to the board.
“We also think that it may help turn around in part the leave-taking that occurs in the Oberlin schools and may serve as some incentive to remain in the schools,” Dye said.
“Oh definitely. I think that there will be less people going to private school,” Carlin said, when questioned about whether she thought the scholarship would improve retention.
“Yes, this is a definite opportunity for us to retain those students who have gone to other school systems,” Roslyn Valentine, principal of Oberlin High School, said.
Dye declined to comment on whether the scholarship might affect the College’s diversity. Valentine agreed that she couldn’t say whether the scholarship would affect diversity, but she did call attention to the rising rates of minority students planning to attend four-year colleges. Between 1997-1999, the rate of minority students going on from Oberlin High School to four-year colleges hovered between 27 and 30 percent. Last year, however, 56 percent of minority students said they were going on to attend four-year colleges.
“We’ve doubled our efforts for students to attend a four-year college,” Valentine said.
This trend has also been reflected among the student body as a whole, with between 36 and 42 percent of students going on to four-year colleges between 1997 and 1999, and 52 percent last spring.
Booker Peek, associate professor of African American studies and director of the College’s Words Are Very Empowering program, wrote a letter lauding President Dye in the March 27 Oberlin News-Tribune.
“In a word,” he wrote, “this [is] an incredible feat…Oberlin College now stands virtually alone among over 3,000 other colleges, universities, etc. in America seeking to raise the academic standards of our high school.”
He posited that unless parents mobilized to guarantee that their students received superior educations in the public schools, that momentum — and opportunities for advancement — could be lost. “For the economically and academically disadvantaged students, not all of whom are black, President Dye’s unbelievable feat and the generosity of the college’s Board of Trustees will have no meaning unless we parents, teachers, ministers, garbage collectors, etc. all redouble our efforts to educate these children.”
Peek’s program, WAVE, is targeted at academically disadvantaged students. “I am fully confident that black children, indeed all children, have the inherent ability to average 700 plus on the SATs, but we must immerse all of them in the most propitious environments over an 18-year period,” he wrote.
Oberlin’s Board of Education heard from President Dye about the scholarship on March 20. Board members reacted favorably to the idea.
The scholarship will cover tuition only. While room and board are not covered, students who receive the scholarship will still be eligible to apply for financial aid.
Two students have already received the scholarship. They were accepted early decision into the class of 2005. Three additional students from the town have been offered admission but have not yet indicated their intentions. 
Carlin commented on the fact that after graduation many students seek to leave home. “I think every high school child begins to look at freedom from home,” she said. “I guess it probably comes right down to how well the partnership puts together the working relationship with the College as being a viable next step. If they realize what can be offered to them here and the quality of education I think that’s going to outweigh itself as time goes on.”