“Youth who are most likely to need mentors are least likely to have them.”

Disadvantaged teens who get mentored are twice as likely to attend college. A new national study reveals the power of mentors, particularly those in the teaching profession:

• Adult mentors give teens a 50 percent greater likelihood of attending college
• Mentorship by a teacher nearly doubles the odds of attending college for disadvantaged students

“Potential is sometimes squashed by the social environment, and the data show that mentors can overcome those forces,” said Lance Erickson, a sociology professor at Brigham Young University and the study’s lead author. The information on more than 14,000 adolescents who participated in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health shows less than half of disadvantaged students report having any adult mentor and only seven percent had a mentoring relationship with a teacher.

Mentors proved pivotal in whether students make the jump to college. For example, students whose parents do not have even a high school degree are normally 35 percent likely to enroll in college. The rate jumps to 66 percent when the youth considers one of their teachers to be a personal mentor. “Teacher-mentors close the college gap for disadvantaged kids [and] participants indicate that their mentors weren’t necessarily doing anything extraordinary, just being involved and treating the young person as an important human being,” adds Erickson.