On October 4, 2012, Comptroller John C. Liu called an expansion of college counseling in the City’s public high schools — in light of alarming statistics that show that NYC’s workforce lags behind other major American cities in educational attainment and that four out of five public high-school students don’t graduate from college.

A report released by Comptroller Liu, “The Power of Guidance: Giving Students the College Counseling They Need,” builds on his ambitious “Beyond High School NYC” initiative by outlining ways to increase college counseling and mentoring, expand early-intervention efforts, and create more partnerships between high schools and area colleges. It proposes investing nearly $176 million annually to more than double the number of school counselors and reduce the counselor-to-student ratio to 100:1.

“A high school diploma is no longer sufficient to meet the demands of the 21st century economy. If we are serious about increasing the number of public school students who graduate from college, we must invest in meaningful college counseling,” Comptroller Liu said. “Shortchanging students by providing them with little to no counseling might save some money in the short term but is a ‘penny-wise, pound-foolish’ strategy detrimental to the City’s long-term economic interests.”

[“A recommendation to increase the amount of counselors and to increase funding for student sucess centers is going to have a huge, huge impact in our city’s young people” said by Jose Lopez a Make the Road New York Youth Coordinator.]

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