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Growing up in Morris Heights, a poor neighbourhood in the Bronx where violence was omnipresent, Joel Cabrera thought his future would be either “death or jail, because that’s what the outcomes are here”. Middle school was like “a juvenile- detention facility”. High school did not interest him enough to finish. Had he stopped there, he would have faced a life on the edge of penury. Among high-school dropouts nationwide, average earnings are only $600 a week. To avoid that, Mr Cabrera enrolled in courses offered at his local community college. There he came across a scheme called ASAP (“Accelerated Study in Associate Programmes”) that sought to push pupils like him—city residents without family wealth or familiarity with universities— to complete two-year degrees.
喬爾·卡布雷拉在布朗克斯區的一個貧窮社區摩里斯高地長大，那里充斥著暴力，他認為自己的未來“要么是死亡，要么是坐牢，因為在這里只有這兩種結果”。中學就像是一個“少年拘留所”。他也沒有足夠的興趣上完高中。如果他就停在那里，他將會面臨一生的窮困潦倒。全國的高中輟學者的每周平均收入只有600美元。為了避免這種情況，卡布雷拉報名了當地的社區學院的課程。在那里，他遇到了一個名為ASAP的計劃（“副學士學習計劃”），該計劃旨在推動像他這樣——沒有家庭財富或對大學不熟悉的城市居民——完成兩年的學位。
ASAP is designed to address a simply stated problem. Many low-income minority students enroll in college. But few finish. Only 34% of black men finish their bachelor’s degree within six years, compared with the average rate of 60%. Those individual decisions to drop out collectively amount to society-wide stratification. The racial gaps in earning college degrees have hardly budged since 1995. Simple as the problem may be to describe, the approach taken by ASAP is complicated. Rather than target one thing that derails students, the programme tries to tackle many at once. Pupils are given financial help, including money for textbooks and free MetroCards to get around the city. They must meet academic and career advisers several times a month. They are tracked by a data operation that detects pupils in precarious positions before they quit. This worked for Mr Cabrera, who continued to a bachelor’s degree, a few internships and a series of good jobs after that.
ASAP的目的在于解決一個說起來很簡單的問題。許多低收入的少數族裔進入了大學。但他們之中很少有人能完成學業。只有34%的黑人男性在六年內完成學士學位，而相較而言學士學位的平均通過率在60%。那些個人決定退學總體上等于社會范圍的階層分化。自1995年以來，獲得大學學位的種族差異幾乎沒變。也許這個問題描述起來很簡單，但是ASAP所采取的方法很復雜。這項計劃不是針對學生退學這一件事，而是嘗試一次解決多個問題。學生們獲得了經濟援助，包括買課本的錢和城市的免費地鐵卡。他們必須每個月與學術和職業顧問進行幾次會面。他們被一個數據操作系統追蹤，這個數據操作系統可以在他們退學前檢測他們的不穩定狀態。這個系統對于卡布雷拉來說很管用，他繼續學習直到獲得學士學位，也獲得了幾個實習機會以及后續的一系列好的工作。
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