The disparities are striking. While 83 percent of white public-school students in New Orleans enrolled in college after high-school graduation, only 59 percent of Black public-school students did. Of those New Orleans students who do go to college, 91 percent of white students returned for the fall of their second year, compared with 68 percent of Black students.

Four Black New Orleans residents share their stories of navigating barriers to college and how they managed to return, sometimes decades later, to earn a degree. 

Jose Antonio Vargas, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, filmmaker, and immigration rights activist, discusses the prospects of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in the United States, immigration policy in general, and what colleges and universities can do to help undocumented students who are living in limbo.