Moms on Welfare Face Obstacles to Higher Education.

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.