All this week , PBS NewsHour premieres a special 5-part series, “Rethinking College: Closing the Graduation Gap,” which profiles five leading edge experiments aimed at improving educational and career opportunities for students.

Thursday, the series focused on the DirectConnect to Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½ program. To see the video .

DirectConnect to Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½ is a nationally recognized program that guarantees admission into Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½ for students graduating from one of the four institutions. The state college partners – Eastern Florida State College, Lake Sumter State College, Seminole State College, Valencia College – prepared about 70 percent of the more than 10,000 students who transferred to Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½ in 2012-2013. Daytona State College has since joined as a fifth state college partner.

Tune in all this week at 7 p.m. to WÂ鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½ to see the following:

  • Monday: How the University of Texas at Austin figured out what’s keeping their low income students from graduating and built a leadership network that’s decreasing the dropout rate.
  • Tuesday: How is it that 500 high schools seniors are graduating with an Associate’s degree and 3,000 of their peers are enrolled in college courses, in a town on the Mexico border were the odds are against them?
  • Wednesday: What happens when a school stops giving out aid for merit and just focuses on need?
  • Thursday: Transferring credits between community college and university is a huge problem.  See how a community college and the Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ã½ are fixing it.
  • Friday:  How did ASU, the largest university in America, restructure to prepare for the future while increasing acceptance and graduation rates for students from all income backgrounds?