for every student. And I'm including trade schools and so under that broad umbrella.
I was the first person in my family to graduate high school. I was offered a full ride scholarship to Texas A&M, which I took. I married during my sophomore year, but my spouse did not have a scholarship, so we both worked.
At the end of 4 years, I was 12 hours short of a degree, and I needed $525 for another semester of school, an impossible sum. My parents couldn't help - they were 8th grade dropouts, scraping by.
I did not know that student loans existed. I could have borrowed it from the school loan fund, but I had no schema for that. I dropped out. 20 years later, my local university did an outreach to those with incomplete degrees from anywhere. These specialists arranged my schedule, did the transfer of credit, arranged a student loan, and I finished my degree that spring and began teaching.
Since then, I have earned a Master's in education, and I teach in a large high school where 50% of the population has parents who never finished high school and where 85% qualify for free and reduced lunch. I still work with the community outreach for UT-Permian Basin, the folks who helped me, to help my own students.
Great program, and for those with no background, like me, an absolute godsend. My experience is that it's never the coursework that keeps students from finishing college, it's the lack of funding, time management, prioritizing, and just not taking one step at a time that kills.
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