MTV: Music Television and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation want to make sure high-school graduates are ready for college.
The network and the charitable foundation said Monday that they have teamed up on a new joint effort aimed at raising young people's awareness of the importance of graduating from high school ready for college.
The first element of the effort was a new poll conducted by CBS News on behalf of MTV, the Gates Foundation, and the National Governors Association, which found “a disheartening disconnect between the ambitions young people have to go to college and the reality that most never make it -- what is being dubbed ‘The Ambition Gap,’” the two parties said in a prepared statement.
“We're thrilled that MTV is getting the message out, having this told through the eyes of the kids themselves,” Microsoft Corp. chairman and Gates Foundation cofounder Bill Gates said in an interview with MTV News earlier this year, “and we think it can make a huge difference.”
MTV vice president of public affairs Ian Rowe added, "Young people have repeatedly told us that education is one of the most crucial concerns they face. They believe in the dream -- and the necessity -- of a college degree, but the reality is that the overwhelming majority of young Americans -- especially poor and minority students -- do not graduate from high school prepared for college or work or do not graduate from high school at all.”
