Baylor Partners with American Talent Initiative

Baylor is among 68 select universities that have partnered with the American Talent Initiative (ATI) to enroll and educate an additional 50,000 high-achieving low- and moderate-income students by 2025.

ATI, supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies, brings together a diverse set of public and private institutions united in this common goal. ATI members will enhance their efforts to recruit, enroll and support lower-income students, learn from each other and contribute to research that will help other colleges and universities expand opportunity.

Launched in December 2016, ATI was founded with a national goal of educating 50,000 additional high-achieving, lower-income students at the 270 colleges and universities with the highest graduation rates by 2025. ATI indicates there are approximately 430,000 lower-income students currently enrolled at the 270 institutions.

Highly talented lower-income students are much less likely to graduate with a college degree than their higher-income peers, according to ATI. When qualified high-achieving, lower-income students attend top colleges and universities, their probability of graduating increases significantly, as do potential life earnings and long-term opportunities.

These students have earned the opportunity these schools offer, but for a variety of reasons—including a lack of information about their options, confusion about costs and inadequate financial aid offers—many of them simply lack access. ATI seeks to ensure that these “missing” students have a path to attend and thrive at the institutions with the highest-graduation rates and best track records for post-graduate success.

Baylor and other ATI members will share lessons learned as well as institutional data, and throughout the coming years, will annually publish their aggregate progress toward meeting the national goal of 50,000 additional lower-income students by 2025. The Aspen Institute’s College Excellence Program and Ithaka S+R, the two not-for-profit organizations coordinating the initiative, will study the practices that lead to measurable progress and share that knowledge with the partners through regular publications.