It's not clear that efforts to increase the college attendance and graduation rates of low-SES students improves their overall welfare:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/04/can-upward-mobility-cost-you-your-health/
Can Upward Mobility Cost You Your Health?
By GREGORY E. MILLER, EDITH CHEN and GENE H. BRODY
New York Times
January 4, 2014

...

Among American children there are wide socioeconomic gaps on many dimensions of well-being: school achievement, mental health, drug use, teenage pregnancy and juvenile incarceration, to name just a few. Despite the risks that lower-income children face, we also know that a significant minority beat the odds. They perform admirably in school, avoid drugs and go on to college.

Psychologists refer to these children as resilient, because they achieve positive outcomes in adverse circumstances. They do so in part by cultivating a kind of determined persistence. Often with nurturing from a parent, relative or mentor, they set goals for the future, work diligently toward them, navigate setbacks, stay focused on the long term and resist temptations that might knock them off the ladder to success.

Several years ago, we began studying these resilient young people, trying to find out if their success stories also translated into physical health benefits. We reasoned that, if disadvantaged children were succeeding academically and emotionally, they might also be protected from health problems that were more common in lower-income youth. As it turned out, the exact opposite was true. These young people were achieving success by all conventional markers: doing well academically, staying out of trouble, making friends and developing a positive sense of self. Underneath, however, their physical health was deteriorating.

Our first hints of this pattern came from a study of 489 rural African-American young people in Georgia, whom one of us, Gene Brody, has been tracking for more than 15 years. Most came from families who were working but poor. In 2010, their average family income was about $12,000 a year; about half lived below the poverty line. We found a subgroup of resilient children who, despite these obstacles, were rated, at age 11, by their teachers as being diligent, focused, patient, academically successful and strong in social skills.

We followed these young people until they were 19 and studied their mental and physical health, focusing on depression, drug use, aggression and criminal behavior. As in past studies, those who were rated positively at age 11 had relatively few of these problems when they were 19. When we looked beneath the surface, though, these apparently resilient young people were not faring well. Compared with others in the study, they were more obese, had higher blood pressure and produced more stress hormones (like cortisol, adrenaline and noradrenaline). Remarkably, their health was even worse than peers who, at age 11, had been rated by teachers as aggressive, difficult and isolated. They were at substantial risk for developing diabetes or hypertension down the line.