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.

Working Class to College: The Promise and Peril Facing Blue-Collar America

Business & Money

Carr, Robert Owen

Johnson, Dirk

Education & Reference

GSBF Media

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.

First Chance: How Kids with Nothing Can Change Everything

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

This is a triumphant story of comeback in life and business. Robert Owen Carr experienced decades of struggle that took him to the brink of home foreclosure at age fifty. He would later make a fortune in the card payments industry, only to lose almost everything in 2009, after one of the most devastating data breaches ever. Daring to go public about the cyber attack, Carr saved his company from ruin and fought his way back to prosperity. Along the way he kept a promise to devote his financial success to young people from modest backgrounds, founding the Give Something Back Foundation as an expression of gratitude for the $250 scholarship he received as a high school senior. Unflinchingly revealing, Through the Fires describes one man's rise from an abusive, hardscrabble Illinois youth to success as an entrepreneurial idealist who overcame setbacks to ultimately thrive and do his bit to make the world a little better.

Through the Fires: An American Story of Turbulence, Business Triumph and Giving Back

Biographies & Memoirs

Professionals & Academics

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Books by Carr, Robert Owen