WATCH: Why America Needs a ‘B.A. Breakthrough’ — and How Ending Diploma Disparities Could Become the Most Effective Anti-Poverty Program in History

Just 11 percent of low-income and first-generation students go on to complete college within six years of leaving high school. In this new documentary, Richard Whitmire talks about the themes of his new book, “The B.A. Breakthrough,” which argues that reversing these kinds of diploma disparities could be the advent of “the most effective anti-poverty program ever launched in this country” and celebrates places across the country where this breakthrough is already happening — from innovative K-12 schools, many of them public charters, where smart data-driven college counseling is now the standard; to elite colleges, like UCLA, where once-disparaged community college transfers are accepted by the thousands; to creative nonprofits, like the College Advising Corps, which is opening the eyes of high schools everywhere to the hard reality of how their grads actually do once they reach college. Watch the full video.

—Edited by James Fields