CHRISTIANSBURG - Roger Masri was 4 when his family left Lebanon for the United States to escape civil war. No one in the family spoke English. Twenty-six years later Masri and his three siblings have four bachelor's degrees and a law degree among them.

If it wasn't for Upward Bound, a national program designed to help low-income, first-generation college students get into college, Masri said he and his siblings would probably be working at the family restaurant in Pearisburg or the Celanese Acetate plant in Giles County. "Being from a rural town in Virginia and not knowing anybody and not knowing any better and having some guidance, what choices would you have?" said Masri, who is an accounts manager for Onyx Acceptance Corp. in Christiansburg.

President Bush's budget plan for fiscal year 2005, released earlier this month, proposes eliminating the program that Masri credits with helping him attend Radford University. While the White House argues that the funds could do more as part of Bush's No Child Left Behind program, supporters of Upward Bound call the proposed change shortsighted and irrational.

Susan Trebach, spokeswoman for the Council for Opportunity in Higher Education, objected to the U.S. Department of Higher Education's contention that Upward Bound was ineffective. She points to recent figures that show of the 13,100 Upward Bound students who graduated from high school in 2000, all but 1,000 of them went to college. Seventy-five percent of those 12,100 students went to four-year schools, she said.

"To say that all these students actually enroll in college is really saying quite a bit," she said. "We have millions of success stories, and, you know, that's the bottom line."

Upward Bound pairs high schools with participating colleges throughout the country. Roanoke College started working with students in 1965. Virginia Tech started two years later. High school students take trips to campus for tutoring on weekends and spend six weeks at a college in their area each summer. Along with academic help, students in the program visit other colleges to help them select where they want to go, receive guidance and financial aid for college applications and entrance exams, and participate in community service and work study programs.

Because the program is funded on 10-year cycles and grants to schools are for four years, Virginia Tech will operate the program at least through the 2005-06 school year. Roanoke College's funding will run out after the 2006-07 school year if the Bush budget is approved.

Virginia Tech also conducts Talent Search, a similar program that is less intensive and costly but serves more students. Bush's budget plan also calls for that program, which works with students from middle school through high school, to be eliminated.

U.S. Rep. Virgil Goode, R-Rocky Mount, wouldn't comment on the effectiveness of Upward Bound and Talent Search on Monday, but said he preferred them to No Child Left Behind.

"If you just shifted money for No Child Left Behind back to those programs, it'd be OK," he said.

But the U.S. Department of Education points to a study by Mathematica Policy Research that says Upward Bound does not affect overall enrollment in colleges and has little effect on high school achievement.

However, the study also concludes that the program's most notable effect is increased enrollment at four-year schools for students who have low expectations when they start the program. Students who don't think they'll go to a four-year college are doing so at a rate 20 percent higher than other students with similar expectations.

Tom Wilson, director of Virginia Tech's Upward Bound and Talent Search programs, said they target students who will work to take advantage of benefits the program provides.

"They're coming from households where people in the family have not gone to college, don't understand the process of it, what students need to do and what aid they can apply for," Wilson said.

Masri said he and his brothers and sister were active in sports and student government and made good grades. But all of that would have added up to a trip to community college because his family didn't have the money or wherewithal to send them to a four-year college, he said.

"School counselors are just not able to do all the things they [Upward Bound] help out with," said Christiansburg High School guidance counselor Kenita Brugh. She said no program is as effective at getting students into college as Upward Bound.

U.S. Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Abingdon, called the president's proposal "insensitive and shortsighted," and said the program pays for itself with the production of workers who went through it.

This isn't the first time the two programs have been threatened. In 1983 President Reagan proposed eliminating the two programs. Congress discussed scaling back the programs in 1995. In both cases campaigning by the programs' supporters led to an increase in funding.

A celebration of programs that help low-income students attend college will be held Feb. 26 in Virginia Tech's McBryde Hall. The noon event is open to the public. For more information call 231-6911.