The Colleges of Worcester Consortium, a nonprofit advocacy group for higher education in the region, has received two grants totaling more than half a million dollars.
The federal government awarded the consortium an Educational Talent Search grant worth $325,000 in the next five years, which aims to identify students from disadvantaged backgrounds to ensure they succeed in higher education. The program has worked with more than 800 students in Grades 7 through 12 since 1993, and an average of 93 percent of the students have been accepted into college.
The consortium also received a $250,000 grant from the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education for the College Access Challenge program, which identifies areas of the state with the highest concentration of first-generation minority and low-income residents with low college-attendance rates.
