This is such an important topic. During my years in law school, I oversaw a volunteer mentoring program that brought 5th grade kids from a local Title 1 school into the law building and paired them with law student mentors who helped with homework for 1 hour a week. The year ended with the law students assisting the kids in a mock trial presentation. One of the aims of the program was to help these kids feel comfortable in a setting of Higher Education, and to give them the opportunity to associate with/ask questions of graduate students. Many of the kids had never been on a college campus, or came from homes where no other family member had attended college. The law professor who founded the program, Brett Scharffs, has written more extensively regarding the program, and his findings are much more than simply anecdotal regarding how programs such as these can give kids a leg up, or at least give them a vision of what "can be". I agree whole-heartedly with Paul Tough's statement that higher education and social mobility have become very intertwined.