“Why poor kids don’t stay in college

Jeff Guo:

Tuesday in October and Terrell Kellam is running late. He usually wakes up at 5:30 a.m. to catch the first of two buses that will take him from southwest Baltimore to Morgan State University, just north of the city. With a good connection, making it to his college classes might take an hour and a half.

But his bus pass has been acting up recently. He spends the morning looking for spare change. He’s going to miss his first class. And, because he forgot to pack food from home, he doesn’t have anything to eat for the rest of the day. He goes hungry pretty often.