How do you spur student to grab opportunity?

WASHINGTON — Hers was such a simple request, Laura Stone must still be scratching her head at my response.

Stone, a volunteer with the D.C. College Access Program (DC-CAP), wanted me to speak to a group of local high school students "to encourage them to go to college and help them understand the wide range of options that college could make available to them."

And since I'm always running off at the mouth about the importance of education, she must have thought me a natural for the chore.

But instead of an instant and enthusiastic "yes" to her request, what she got was the eruption of years of frustration — and this confession: I don't know what to say to a youngster with no particular plans or prospects, who suddenly is given the financial means to attend college and who cannot see it as a not-to-be-missed opportunity.

I know how to talk to youngsters who are looking for guidance as to what colleges (and college majors) they might consider, or who need help getting ready for college or career, or who want to know the relationship between my own education and my professional success. Mentoring, role-modeling, experience-sharing — no problem. But what do you say to students who don't see affordable college as an opportunity?

The particular opportunity DC-CAP is trying to promote comes out of the congressionally enacted tuition assistance program that allows Washington, D.C., residents to attend any state university in the nation while receiving up to $10,000 a year to make up the difference between in-state and out-of-state tuition. It also provides up to $2,500 a year for private colleges in the Washington area or for historically black colleges.

The program doesn't make college free, but it does make it affordable. The privately funded nonprofit DC-CAP tries to help translate the opportunity into reality.

Thousands of young people have taken advantage of the break, with the result that the college enrollment rate here has increased significantly since the program was established in 1999.

But thousands of others don't even see the opportunity that seems so obvious to us. Surely their numbers include the "knuckleheads" of Bill Cosby's impatient description, kids who won't try to speak or dress or behave in ways that might encourage someone to give them a break. The comedian has been particularly harsh regarding parents who won't take these youngsters to the woodshed and make them understand that they are blowing their life chances.