College-Going Culture in High Schools: How Schools Shape Student Aspirations

College-going culture refers to the set of norms, expectations, practices, and resources that shape whether students in a given school see postsecondary education as a realistic and expected part of their futures. Research documents significant variation in college-going culture across schools and communities, with meaningful consequences for students' educational aspirations, college knowledge, and ultimately college enrollment and completion. The class and racial stratification of college expectations in American society shapes what students are told to aspire toward, both explicitly and implicitly, from early in their educational careers. Students in high-income communities grow up assuming they will attend college and receive years of informal coaching, family expectations, and peer modeling that reinforce this assumption. Students from low-income families and communities of color may receive mixed messages about whether college is for people like them, whether they can afford it, and whether the effort is worth the cost. School-level practices significantly shape college-going culture. Schools where college counseling is proactive and visible, where applications and financial aid processes are demystified, where alumni who have gone to college return to share their experiences, and where teachers explicitly connect coursework to college preparation create environments in which college is normalized as an expectation for all students. Schools where counselors are overloaded, where college information is not systematically provided, and where academic tracking limits the courses available to low-income students create environments where college feels remote and inaccessible. AVID, a college preparatory program targeting students who are capable of college success but typically underrepresented in higher education, has accumulated a significant evidence base for its effectiveness in increasing college enrollment among its target population. The program provides support including tutoring, study skills instruction, field trips to college campuses, and intensive college advising. Research on AVID finds positive effects on college enrollment rates and preparation. College campus visits are powerful experiences for students who have never seen a college campus and for whom college may feel abstract or foreign. Research documents that campus visits increase students' sense that college is accessible and relevant to their lives, particularly when visits include interaction with current students from similar backgrounds. Making campus visits accessible to students from low-income schools, including through transportation support and structured visit programs, is a relatively low-cost intervention with meaningful effects on college aspirations. Dual enrollment programs, which allow high school students to take community college courses for both high school and college credit, create concrete college-going experiences while students are still in high school. Research on dual enrollment finds positive effects on college enrollment and credit accumulation, with larger effects for students who complete higher numbers of dual enrollment credits. The college campus experience that dual enrollment provides is itself valuable in building college-going identity. Parent and family engagement in college-going culture is an important dimension that schools can actively support. Families whose children attend college are themselves part of the college-going network; families whose children would be the first to attend college may have less knowledge about the process and may need more deliberate engagement. School programs that include parents in college information nights, financial aid workshops, and campus visits extend college-going culture into families and communities. The long-term effects of college-going culture on community outcomes extend beyond individual students. Communities with higher rates of college completion have better economic outcomes, healthier populations, and more robust civic participation. Building college-going culture in high schools is an investment in community futures, not only individual ones.