Breakaway Learners

This powerful book explores how institutions of higher education can successfully serve “breakaway” students—first-generation, low-income students who are trying to break away from the past in order to create a more secure future. The gap between low-SES and high-SES students persists as efforts to close it have not met with great success. In this provocative book, Gross offers a new approach to addressing inequities by focusing on students who have succeeded despite struggling with the impacts of poverty and trauma. Gross draws on her experience as a college president to outline practical steps that post-secondary institutions can take to create structures of support and opportunity that build reciprocal trust. Students must trust their institutions and professors, professors must trust their students, and eventually students must learn to trust themselves.