Vivyan Adair is proof that higher education can improve and transform women's lives, their earning power and the lives of their children... Adair, a former welfare recipient, is now a professor of women's studies at Hamilton College in Clinton, NY., and co-director there of a group that helps low-income parents complete post-secondary education, the Academic Coalition for Full Citizenship through Education and Social Support... "The process of earning a post-secondary undergraduate and graduate degree can otherwise inviolate cycles of intergenerational poverty. "... She and other researchers note that escalating work requirements, a bureacratic morass of regulation and misinformation, and a "work-first" culture are driving many needy and talented women away from higher education.