PHOTOGRAPH BY YOSEF KALINKO
Much has been written about how Georgia State University has increased its graduation rate by 74 percent in the last 15 years while building one of the most diverse student bodies in the nation. Since 2011, the number of Black students graduating is up 47 percent, the number of students eligible for federal Pell grants earning a degree is up 46 percent, and the number of Latinx graduates is up 89 percent. Such increases were no accidents. They were the result of systematic institutional reform. In Won’t Lose This Dream, investigative journalist Andrew Gumbel explores the turf battles, educational experiments, student successes and failures, and leaps of faith that made GSU into what the New York Times recently called an “engine of social mobility.”
An excerpt from Won’t Lose This Dream