Jack Camp says he “grew up a bit rough”—quite an understatement for someone who was raised by drug-addicted parents and served 10 years in state prison. Today, at age 40, Camp has turned his life around. A state-funded program helped him earn a commercial driver’s license for free, literally putting him on the road to a productive future.
Jake Taber, an avid video gamer since his middle school years, always knew his future would be wired. He just didn’t know it would arrive so quickly. At 21, Taber has already earned an associate degree and built an impressive resumé as an IT professional, thanks to an innovative program offered by Michigan’s community colleges.
College success isn’t just an individual goal, or even one that can be confined to the campus. To maximize progress—and to ensure that success is shared by all segments of the population—it’s an issue that must also be tackled at the state level. Officials in Minnesota have taken that lesson to heart. Through a variety of public-private partnerships, they’re working to build a holistic approach—not just to increase degree attainment, but also to improve health and employment outcomes.
When it comes to meeting the needs of student parents, the nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities have always been in the forefront—in part because they seek to create a supportive, family-type atmosphere. “Historically, we have had to be our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers,” explains one well-known expert on the history and culture of HBCUs. “It’s no coincidence. It’s not serendipitous. It’s because we care.”
College students in the Washington, D.C., area—and their children—are getting a boost from an innovative nonprofit organization that takes a two-pronged approach to education success. Generation Hope’s “two-generation model” provides direct services to the students themselves—including tuition assistance, academic advising, child care, peer mentoring, and parental counseling—while helping prepare their preschoolers for success in kindergarten.
In the early 2010s, Lisa Dirks was visiting her relatives in Alaska when she noticed an article in the Aleut Corporation newsletter on their dining room table: an item that looked like a research article. As a scholar, researcher, and tribal member, she was curious about its contents, so she picked it up and began reading.
Jasmine Neosh had arrived at an inflection point. In the fall of 2016, the Menominee tribal member was waiting tables and tending bar at an upscale Chicago eatery as the protests over the Dakota Access Pipeline grew into a full-blown crisis in the northern Plains.
Triston Black had the world at his feet. As a senior at Navajo Preparatory School in Farmington, New Mexico, scholarships and enrollment incentives were pouring in from across the country as colleges and universities were hoping to recruit him.
Creating veteran-friendly institutions is particularly difficult for community colleges. Two-year institutions enroll the majority of students who have performed military service, yet they frequently lack resources they need to help vets.
IIn the winter of 2008, Ricardo (Rico) Pereyda prepared for his final mission with military precision. Behind the walls of his boyhood home, Pereyda placed blankets on the floor of his old bedroom. He wrote a letter of apology to his estranged wife and his parents, June and José. Then he lay on the floor, cocked a 9 mm handgun, placed the barrel of the weapon in his mouth and rested his finger on the trigger.