Ashkon Jafari ’08 was recently invited to the White House to meet President Barack Obama and talk to White House officials about the critical issue of college completion and career readiness. “We are thrilled by our recent White House invitation! This step by the Obama Administration clearly reflects the urgency our country faces in improving college completion and making sure our workforce and economy stay competitive,” said Ashkon Jafari, co-founder and executive director of StudentMentor.org.
With nearly 50 percent of students not graduating from college, the national focus has moved from college access to college completion. This has been emphasized by the President over the course of several State of the Union addresses. The president underscored his pledge to make the United States the world leader in college attainment by 2020, promising to increase the percentage of people ages 25 to 34 that hold an associate’s degree or a bachelor degree from 40 percent to 60 percent. President Obama has even stated, “I want us to produce eight million more college graduates by 2020.”
StudentMentor.org seeks to achieve this goal by leveraging innovative technology at the core of its national mentoring program. Through this online platform, college students can conveniently search for, select and work with mentors to achieve their academic and career goals. StudentMentor.org’s mission is to increase college completion and enhance student career readiness thereby enabling a robust 21st century workforce and community.
Mentoring plays a huge role in reversing the trend of poor college completion rates, “According to a U.S. Department of Education study, students who met with advisors regularly during their freshmen year had 170% greater chance of completing their bachelor’s degree than those that did not.”
StudentMentor.org currently has over 2,000 mentors and provides its program to students from more than 600 universities nationwide. "We think this is just the beginning and can’t wait to scale our program to help tens of thousands of students every year complete college and prepare for the workforce,” said Stephanie Bravo, co-founder and president of StudentMentor.org.
About StudentMentor.org
StudentMentor.org is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization whose mission is to increase college completion and enhance student career readiness thereby enabling a robust 21st century workforce and community. StudentMentor.org seeks to achieve this goal by leveraging innovative technology at the core of its national mentoring program. Through this online platform, college students can conveniently find and work with mentors to achieve their academic and career goals.