“There’s no point in educating only half the population,” said Janet Beer, the vice chancellor—the equivalent of president—of the University of Liverpool, which is in the middle of a city that a Church of England charity says includes five of the 10 poorest neighborhoods in England.

The root of this problem in the U.K. has been traced to poor white boys, like some of the ones in this London gym. They’re even less likely than boys from many racial minority groups to go to college. In low-income neighborhoods, as few as one in 10 boys goes on to higher education, compared to half of girls. By the time they’re 11, researchers have observed, these boys feel little motivation to work hard in school, with few examples in their lives of men who went to college, and little hope they can afford what seem to them to be unaffordable fees.

In the U.S., it’s poor black and Hispanic boys who choose not to go to college, at higher rates than even poor white boys, for what experts believe are similar reasons. And a new study warns that, in America, all boys at the bottom of the income ladder are losing hope of ever climbing up it, in what the authors call “economic despair.”

As the British teenagers in the gym keep stretching, and a 12-year-old kicks a tattered soccer ball around the broad-jump pit, one of the coaches arrives. He’s a third-year student at the University of East London, and he’s part of an embryonic effort to prod boys into considering making college part of their futures.

To reach these boys, a simple approach is being pioneered by the university, which is so focused on sports in its curriculum that the U.S. men’s and women’s basketball teams at the 2012 Olympics in London used its state-of-the-art athletic facilities as home base. The new program, which began this year, aims to have men in college serve as coaches for these boys, and then as role models and mentors.

“We were trying to think, what do young white males engage in?” said Gail May, East London’s head of external and strategic development. “And sport was a way that we could both reach these students and also potentially inspire them.”

That’s now the job of student coaches like this 21-year-old, Jacob Hood, who takes a small group of runners outside to a lighted track beside the noisy A13 carriageway.

“Sport is one’s sort of second family,” said Hood, keeping an eye on a stopwatch as he timed a laser-focused 16-year-old who was speeding through the damp East London chill in worn-out running shoes, short sleeves, an earring, and a hip-hop-inspired knit cap reading FRESH. Giving these teenagers the chance to meet college students like him, Hood said, “definitely opens them up to the possibility” of aiming higher.

“Generally people you’re coaching see you as a role model,” he said. “So if you’re talking about your experience at university, they’ll consider university.”