In a rec room on the campus of Western Michigan University, 28 current and former foster youth form a line along one wall. It’s the first day of their orientation into the college’s Seita Scholars program, and the participants are getting to know one another — and the challenges they face.
“Raise your hands,” commands Peter Thompson, a coach in the program. “How many of you are planning on graduating?”
Twenty-eight hands go up.
“Now, how many of you do the statistics say will graduate?”
Thirty percent, one student guesses.
“Twenty,” offers another.
“Forty,” says a third.
How colleges can create a sense of family and stability for students who have rarely ever had it.
“Forty is correct, for this program,” Mr. Thompson says. “What do you think it would be without Seita Scholars?”
“Seven to 10 percent?” one student guesses.
“Probably close to that, but we don’t really know,” Mr. Thompson says. “Look around you. We don’t want to lose these people. They’re going to need you, and you’re going to need them.”
Mr. Thompson isn’t exaggerating the difficult road these students face. Less than 30 percent of foster youth who enroll in college will earn a degree or certificate in six years, and only 14 percent will finish with a bachelor’s degree in that time, according to a recent government study. That puts them behind even other low-income students, 43 percent of whom will earn a degree in that time period.
Foster youth are a student population with a complicated set of challenges to overcome. Many are academically unprepared for college because of a childhood spent bouncing between districts. They often suffer from anxiety and other mental-health consequences of childhood trauma. And they’re far less likely than their peers to have a supportive parent or guardian who can help them adjust to college life.
Western Michigan is one of a growing number of colleges that are trying to overcome these hurdles through a combination of individual attention and financial support. Over the next four years, the students at this summer orientation will receive up to $53,600 apiece in scholarship aid and meet regularly with coaches, like Mr. Thompson, who will talk them through crises, both academic and personal. They’ll be matched with mentors from the college and community, bond with each other at college-sponsored social events, and stay in the dorms over breaks, when they might otherwise become homeless.
Nationally, the graduation gap for students from foster care remains stubbornly persistent. At Western Michigan, where 54 percent of full-time students graduate in six years, 40 percent of Seita Scholars do — better than the average for this student population, Mr. Thompson says, but “still unacceptable.”
During the orientation, Mr. Thompson lines up the students in alphabetical order to introduce themselves.
They see college as an opportunity to get rid of that label.
The first in line is Alexis Matthews, the second of eight kids from a Detroit family. She entered the foster-care system at age 5 because “my mom just kept having kids, and there wasn’t enough food for us.” She went through three placements before she was adopted by her uncle.
Next to her is Alyssa Robinson, of Hamburg, Mich., who was removed from an abusive home environment when she was 15 and sent with her twin brother to live with her grandparents. She made it into college; she says he’s on a path to prison.
Then there’s Ashton Amstutz, a transfer student who was born in Pontiac, Mich., but moved so frequently that kids called him “gypsy boy.” Taken from his parents at age 6, he cycled through eight foster-home placements before he was adopted by a pastor, who later disowned him for being gay. Now, at 24, he stays with a professor at Schoolcraft College, in Livonia, Mich., who took him in when he was a student there. For the first time in years he has stability in his life. “It’s weird,” he says.
The three students followed very different paths through the nation’s foster-care system, which serves some 400,000 children and young adults each year. But in making it to this point, each of them has defied the odds. While 70 percent of current and former foster youth aspire to attend college, only about 20 percent enroll.
The effort to keep the Seita Scholars on track toward graduation starts on Day 1 of orientation: The students create “vision boards” that they’ll hang in their dorms to remind them of their goals. Ms. Robinson, who wants to travel, get married, and have a house and kids, includes magazine images of rings, a beach with sea turtles, and a Parenting magazine banner on her poster. Ms. Matthews, who wants to be rich, creates a collage of designer brands; names like Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Prada, and Tiffany fall into a pile beneath her scissors.
Mr. Amstutz has a migraine and skips the activity, but he shares a picture of a vision board he made with his brother, before he got into drugs and moved out of state. On it are these words: “Unkillable” and “Happy at Last.”
No one really knows how many students from foster care attend college.
The best national statistics come from the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, which asks applicants if they have been in foster care or a dependent or ward of the court since the age of 13. In the 2013-14 academic year, 72,000 applicants answered yes; 43 percent of them attended public two-year colleges.
However, that number excludes students who left the system before they were 13, or are considered financially independent for other reasons — such as being 24 or older, or married. In a 2016 report, the Government Accountability Office estimated that the true number is closer to 286,000, about 1 percent of students.
Identifying those students on individual campuses isn’t easy. Federal law prohibits financial-aid offices from sharing the names of students who indicate that they’ve been in foster care, and few institutions ask applicants outright. Some students won’t admit it, even when asked.
“They see college as an opportunity to get rid of that label,” explains Kerri Kearney, an associate professor of higher education at Oklahoma State University.
The first comprehensive campus support program for foster youth started 20 years ago at California State University at Fullerton, after an incoming freshman became homeless after aging out of foster care. Western Michigan’s program, which turns 10 next year, was inspired by a statewide summit on foster youth attended by the college’s directors of admissions and financial aid and a professor of social work. It’s named after an alum who earned three degrees from the college after aging out of foster care.
Today there are at least 80 comprehensive programs nationally for foster youth at four-year colleges, according to Fostering Success Michigan, a statewide network. They’re becoming more common at community colleges, too.
Still, there’s scant evidence that the graduation gap between foster youth — including those in campus-support programs — and their college peers is closing.
Twenty years after the creation of the Cal State Fullerton program, “we don’t know very much at all” about what works with foster youth, says Amy Dworsky, a researcher at the University of Chicago who reviewed college access and success programs for foster youth for a 2014 brief.
One approach that has gained currency is the designation of a single point of contact, or a SPOC, on a campus. That practice, which has proven successful with other at-risk populations, provides students with one-stop experts who can demystify the campus bureaucracy, connect them with counseling and tutoring, and simply listen to their problems.
In programs that require participants to apply, like Western Michigan’s, SPOCs often take the form of staff “coaches” who each handle a caseload of students; in open-enrollment programs, or those with fewer resources, the SPOCs are often faculty and staff volunteers.
Just knowing someone is there, who knows your name, ... means a lot.
Oklahoma’s colleges are in the latter category. This fall the state network for foster youth will release an online training program that will let campus employees earn badges that identify them as points of contact.
“Students tell us they get really fatigued from having to educate higher-ed people” about their circumstances,” says Ms. Kearney, who heads up the network. Now, “they can go straight to those people with badges.”
At Western Michigan, coaches assess incoming students to identify their strengths and weaknesses in seven domains, including relationships, physical and mental health, and identity. They then work with the students to set goals and plan the steps to achieve them.
In the process, the coaches teach life skills that foster youth often miss out on in the shuffle among homes — skills like managing money, cooking, and navigating public transportation.
The coaches also spend a lot of time on conflict resolution and setting boundaries. They’ll role-play difficult conversations with parents and peers, and mediate conflicts between the students.
Mr. Amstutz, who has been paired with Mr. Thompson, says he appreciates the dedicated support. “Just knowing someone is there, who knows your name, when you’re used to people walking away, means a lot,” he says.
Community building is also a central part of comprehensive programs like Western Michigan’s. Surveys with students who have participated in campus-based programs for foster youth have found that it is the “sense of family” that they create that students value most.
At Western Michigan’s Seita Scholars orientation, the community-building includes a visit from Kinetic Affect, a duo of spoken-word poets.
The pair ask the students to write down their snap judgments about them, then turn the tables, asking the students what others would miss if they saw them in a coffee shop.
When the students finish writing, the poets read their anonymous responses aloud. Their stories are devastating.
“That I saw my mother sell her body for eight years,” writes one.
“That I was in a coma because my mother tried to take my life,” writes another.
“That I saw my baby brother suffocated by my siblings while my parents were bar-hopping.”
“That I’ve had 29 caseworkers, and have nine brothers and sisters I’ve never met.”
When they are done reading, everyone in the room sits silently for a minute. Then there’s this, from Gabriel Giron, one of the poets.
“If you learn to accept and honor your story, you invite people to share with you,” he tells the students. “By sharing, we heal ourselves.”
