of studies have found that people with bachelor’s degrees earn $800,000 more in lifetime income, on average, than people with only high school degrees. College graduates are less likely to smoke or be obese. They are more likely to vote and contribute to political campaigns.

Social scientists today spend considerable energy analyzing what leads poor students to graduate from college. But in 1988, Pat Taylor had no vetted theories to guide him. He had only his own Horatio Alger story.

He grew up in Beaumont, Texas, “a penniless, scared, scrawny kid.” A full-ride scholarship to Louisiana State University, where he earned a degree in petroleum engineering, changed his life. Taylor started his own oil company and eventually made the Forbes list of world’s richest men.

By the late 1980s, though, fewothers in Louisiana were replicating his success. More than half of the state’s college students were enrolled in remedial courses. Only one in five students made it to graduation.

When Taylor visited an inner-city middle school in New Orleans, he asked how many kids planned to attend college. Only a few students raised their hands. Their parents couldn’t afford tuition, they told Taylor. Because of that, most of the 11- and 12-year-olds had already given up on school.

Taylor, who died in 2004, was dismayed, his widow said.

“These were children who had been written off, children who had failed, at least once, many twice, and the system was not going to address their needs,” Phyllis Taylor told lawmakers this fall.

Taylor believed money would inspire the students to work harder. He