First Chance: How Kids with Nothing Can Change Everything examines the remarkable triumphs of young people considered least likely to attain a college degree: those who have experienced foster care (three percent graduation rate) or the incarceration of a parent, especially a mother (two percent graduation rate). Some 2.7 million schoolchildren have experienced parental incarceration, while nearly 500,000 are declared wards of the state annually. Yet their experiences receive little attention. The young people themselves are frequently hesitant to talk about their lives, burdened with a sense of shame, even though they are blameless.Philanthropist and author Robert O. Carr has turned the focus of his college scholarship program, Give Something Back, on these often forgotten and neglected kids. As their stories reveal, they have the smarts and drive to compete with peers from more comfortable backgrounds. The author argues that these young people can draw on their special and painful insights to forge powerful change, provided society acknowledges them-and extends a first chance.

Unfortunately, many economically struggling families today see college as beyond their reach--academically, culturally and financially. Working-class young people need a college degree to earn a living wage in today's economy. Yet financial obstacles and a cynical belief that the system benefits only the comfortable and connected seem to place a university education off-limits to tens of millions of Americans. Working Class to College exposes an education class divide that is threatening the American dream of upward social mobility and sowing resentment among those shut out or staggering under crushing debt. The book addresses ways to reduce college costs and shares the inspiring accounts of those who have endured all sorts of hardship "homelessness, an incarcerated parent, dangerously low self-esteem--and fought their way to college and commencement. Robert Carr draws on his blue-collar background as a financially strapped teenager who caught a break as a high school senior more than fifty years ago, and who has made it his mission to mentor and provide need-based scholarships that give working-class kids the opportunity to graduate in four years without student debt.