At Portland Community College (PCC), administrators and faculty are looking for ways to meet the needs of some of the most vulnerable students on campus, including students who have previously been in the foster care system.
College assistance programs for former foster youth, or foster alumni, vary state by state. California, for instance, offers foster alumni grants and tuition waivers to help them achieve their higher education goals. Oregon also offers a tuition waiver to foster alumni to attend public colleges and universities in the state, but educators on campus say that targeted assistance, in addition to tuition dollars, is necessary to help more students succeed.
“They are one of the most vulnerable population of students,” said Neal Naigus, assistant to PCC’s CLIMB executive director, and an administrator who has been involved in efforts to facilitate better services for PCC’s former foster youth students.
“We felt that we needed to provide a safety net and support network, so that there would be people who were around the college and in the community who would be able to assist them,” Naigus said.
Starting at age 18, foster youth age out of the system, often leaving them without the structure that guided them to that point. While it is impossible to generalize about the individual experience of foster care — some have positive home placements, others less so — statistics indicate that once they are on their own, relatively few move on to college and fewer still earn a degree or certificate. According to the Oregon Foster Youth Connection, only 25 percent of former foster youth enter college, and only 6 percent complete a 2- or 4-year degree.
Yet PCC is home to many former foster youth in Oregon. School enrollment data for fall 2016 found that 290 PCC students self-identified as having been involved with the foster care system at least once in their lives. Since the enrollment data applied only to students who are 25 years old or younger, college representatives say that there are probably older students on campus who may have been in foster care.
The college first began to consider a program for students who have experience with the foster care system after Oregon passed its tuition waiver bill in 2011. The program that resulted from these efforts is now called the Fostering Success Program. It comprises a network of faculty and staff at PCC’s four campuses who have volunteered to serve as “campus champions,” meaning that they are available to support students who have been involved with the foster care system.
