Read the Annual Report 2008 PDF.
Click here to hear U.S. Senator Dick Durbin talk about the importance of IEF Scholarships.
Click here to watch the "Newsmakers" video about the IEF airing on CNN Headline News.
Read the Chicago Sun-Time article on the IEF: "Program Invests in Student Success". PDF
Read the Chicago Social article on the IEF's First Annual Food & Wine Tasting Event. PDF
Data / Statistics
In the United States today, it has been shown that college graduates enjoy more social and economic benefits than those without a college degree. Annually, college graduates earn nearly twice as much as high school graduates. College graduates are over three times less likely than high school droputs to be unemployed. College graduates are 50% less likely to smoke or get divorced. College graduates are twice as likely to vote or do volunteer work.
The success of the IEF programs is critical if we truly believe that educational attainment is the key to the "American Dream". This is evidenced by the following statistics:
The Need for Postsecondary Education
- About 90 percent of the fastest-growing jobs of the future will require some postsecondary education or training (U.S. Department of Labor, 2006)
- 70% of all new jobs created by 2008 will require at least some postsecondary education (OECD)
- College graduates in the U.S. earn nearly twice as much as workers with just a high school diploma, one of the highest rates in the world (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD]
- 47.2% of 2004 graduates of CPS not enrolled in college worked for four continuous quarters in the year following their high school graduation (CPS, 6/27/2006)
The Difficulty of Attaining Postsecondary Education
- "Too many students are either discouraged from attending college by rising costs, or take on worrisome debt burdens in order to do so." (Commission on the Future of Higher Education)
- For the first time in six years, total funding for Pell Grants was lower than in the preceding year, down from $13.6 billion in 2004-05 to $12.7 billion in 2005-06. The average Pell Grant per recipient declined by $120 dollars, from $2,474 to $2,354 (College Board, 2006 Trends in Higher Education)
- The proportion of the average published price of tuition, fees, room, and board at a public four-year college or university that could be met by a Pell Grant declined from 42 percent in 2001-02 to 33 percent in 2005-06. Twenty years ago, maximum Pell Grants met nearly 60 percent of total charges in that sector. (College Board, 2006 Trends in Higher Education)
- State funding growth for higher education has fallen to its lowest level in over two decades (US Department of Education, Commission on the Future of Higher Education)
- Low income families are 32% less likely to send their children to college than families with higher incomes
Tuition and fees at public universities increased by 35% in the last five years