On Sunday, Oct. 1, the first day the application became available online, Ben Lara sat down at the computer in his bedroom to apply for federal student financial aid.
Lara, 18, is a senior at Lowell High School, where almost half the 3,200 students are low-income. He is trim with close-cropped hair and a wide flash of a smile. Along with being a National Honor Society student, squeezing in five business electives into an already packed course load, he works 30 to 35 hours a week at his job sorting in-store advertisements at Target. His main goal: getting out of his hometown and into a top-tier college.
In many ways, the future of Lowell, once the largest textile manufacturing hub in the United States, is tied to the success of students like Ben Lara. Like many cities across America, Lowell is struggling to find its economic footing as millions of blue-collar jobs in manufacturing, construction and transportation disappear, subject to offshoring and automation.