For Jennifer Stanley, college has been a lifeline. Having grown up in the foster care system, she said that higher education has changed her perspective.
“Kids like me who grew up in foster care, sometimes it’s hard for us to wrap our mindset around it, but we are human, just like everyone else,” she said. “And we deserve a chance to shine and be who we are and use our intellectual abilities.”
Stanley is a part of a program called Providing Resources And Opportunities For Future Standouts, or PROFS, at Kutztown University. The program is one of 15 to 20 in the state that focus on providing support for foster care youth in college.
“It helps me to be surrounded by people who have been in the same situation or have the same type of struggles as me,” she said.
Stanley entered the foster care system at 13 after her adoptive mother got sick. She said that, while she experienced difficulties during this time, school was a bright spot. It was what motivated her to pursue a higher education.
“I always enjoyed school,” she said. “School was a different environment for me. It was a chance for me to interact with other people, have a bigger support system and allow me to be myself outside of my home.”
While Stanley has been able to thrive at Kutztown, her experience is not that of all foster care youth. Children who have gone through the foster care system may experience financial hardship, need to hold full-time positions, or may be parents themselves, which can impact their ability to pursue a higher education.
Because of this, it can be hard to determine how to “move the needle” on attending college from dream to reality, said Sarah Wasch, the associate director of the Field Center for Children’s Policy, Practice and Research at the University of Pennsylvania.
“National data has always told us that youth in foster care have aspirations of going to college, much like the general public and their peers, but youth in foster care do not attend college and do not complete college at the same rates as the general public,” she said.
The Field Center has been supporting the Foster Care to College Initiative for 10 years now. Wasch explained that this plan focuses on increasing the number of youth in foster care who attend college through research and advocacy work.
As of 2025, Wasch said there is still a significant gap between foster care youth and the general public in rates of accessing higher education.
“[A systematic audit in 2025] reviewed nearly 20 years of data from around the nation about this population, and we can now say that about 11% of young people with foster care experience obtain some sort of higher education degree,” she said. “This is still less than the general public, because in the general public, about 24% of Americans have a bachelor’s degree.”
The Field Center has helped to launch and support campus-based support programs like PROFS at about 19 public or private universities or community colleges.
And, this program isn’t the only one of its kind for Pennsylvania youth.
‘A lot of pieces’ to gather
There are several resources that exist for students to navigate the application process and to stay in school once they are enrolled, Wasch said.
One of the biggest hurdles for foster youth pursuing higher education is gathering all the necessary materials to apply for and start at universities, said Cynda Clyde, the program director for Fostering College Attachment at I-LEAD, Inc.
“There’s a lot of pieces that can fall by the wayside,” she said. “It could be getting a transcript from your high school. Folks have often been in different high schools, some of which may have closed, or they could have gone to a charter school, which takes a different kind of navigation.
“It’s a lot to put on a young person. That whole process, court documents and records needed to prove eligibility and time and care, just so helping someone kind of be aware of and then get through all those steps is a lot, along with applying to the school itself, and scholarships.”
Clyde’s work began with connecting underrepresented adult learners to degree programs. Through work with a foster care agency, she said the organization recognized there was a similar need to help guide foster care youth to college resources.
Her program now helps bridge the gap for students in foster care who want to obtain a degree.
“I’ve learned that it’s less about information dumping, and more about either staying on youth to submit all their paperwork or outlining options that can be real, like explaining that you can work and go to school at the same time,” she said.
Clyde said her work varies – it can be anything from discussing support programs to going over tuition waivers for schools.
“I help out with some aspect of the whole process, from discussing college to all the way through to a warm handoff to a support program on a particular campus, and also the college and financial aid application,” she said.
Wasch emphasized that awareness of the barriers that foster care youth may face is important. She said the Field Center has done trainings to pass information about higher education to those who work directly with foster care youth.
“We’ve done training for foster parents, we’ve done training for caseworkers, we’ve done training for financial aid officers, we’ve done training for high school guidance counselors, and we’ve done training for the general public,” she said. “I’m proud to say that hundreds of people have attended our training over the years.”
Another piece of the puzzle is state resources, Wasch said.
“While a majority of states have some sort of tuition assistance provided for students with foster care experience, very few states do what we do in Pennsylvania, which is including a mandate in the state law that every higher education institution must have a point of contact for students with foster care experience,” she said.
The state also offers a FosterEd tuition waiver, which provides tuition and fee waivers for eligible foster care youth.
This is intended to make college more accessible, she said, with both financial opportunities and more resources for students.
The Field Center also has a resource library for foster youth to learn more and receive further guidance for higher education, Wasch added.
Stanley said many of her resources also came from her high school years at C.B. Community Schools.
“That is a school based on kids of the foster care system,” she said. “There, they allowed us to thrive and go through some colleges around the state to see what would best fit us.”
The schools, which also provide support for children in the juvenile justice system, focuses on “healing-centered supports” that “empower young people.”
Stanley said it was important to have this support.
Challenges remain
Despite these resources, there are still challenges that persist for foster care youth in higher education. One challenge is the transition from high school into higher education, said Madeline Birkner, the senior manager of Persistence & College Partnerships at the Philadelphia Education Fund.
“Out of all these populations, like homeless students, or English language learners, the foster youth category has the lowest graduation rate,” she said. “And that’s not super scientific, but these stats are alarming and concerning.”
In her work, she said, she meets foster care youth from many different backgrounds – ranging from those who have “great academic preparedness” to those who may not graduate high school.
Wasch emphasized that foster care youth may also feel deterred from applying to college due to barriers and lack of knowledge.
“We do know that these [foster care] students are typically less resourced and less insulated to be successful through that trajectory,” she said.
Clyde said getting students from high school into college is the first step, and an important one, in continuing education.
“That bridge from high school graduation or diploma attainment to actually enrolling in a school is a long bridge,” she said. “It’s just with a lot of loose boards, where someone can just fall in.”
Research shows that foster care children are three times more likely to become high school dropouts than their peers. And, Clyde said, retention rates drop as college continues, which can present more barriers for degree attainment.
“It’s a lot of assumed information for those who may be familiar with college matriculation and the process that can’t be assumed at all with first-gen students,” she said.
Despite the cautions, Birkner said there is still an appetite for higher education and that many foster care youth still see success.
“There isn’t one kind of young person in foster care, and so I would say their motivations are also just all over the map, but one uniting factor is just the desire to build a life for themselves,” she said.
She said this can manifest as “scared motivation” – or students feeling like they “need” to attend school. But, she explained, it can also be positive and liberating for students, as they get to choose where they live on campus, what to study, and what activities to be a part of.
Worth the effort
There are some obvious benefits to receiving a higher education, Wasch said.
“Unrelated to foster care, research shows that individuals with a college education across the board earn more annually and in lifetime earnings than individuals without [a college education],” she said.
While it is possible to earn a living without a college degree, studies show that the median annual earnings for men and women between 25 and 34 working full-time are significantly higher for those with a bachelor’s degree or more.
Annually, the median earnings for bachelor’s degree holders are 86% higher than those with just a high school diploma.
For foster care youth in particular, each year in higher education can improve outcomes.
“Research directly with young people aging out of foster care shows that each additional year of higher education can also mitigate against negative, long-term life outcomes such as experiencing homelessness, substance use disorder, earlier, unplanned pregnancy, or incarceration,” she said.
For Stanley, being in school has meant changing the narrative. She said surrounding herself with other foster youth who have pursued higher education has allowed her to reach more people and spread her message.
“If you are looking to change the perception of the world and shift the energy of the world as a foster kid, do it,” she said.
Wasch said giving more students the opportunity for a higher education benefits everyone.
“It benefits the school to keep them in school, it benefits the youth so that they can achieve their personal and professional goals, and it benefits society, because a more educated workforce has numerous long-term benefits for the communities in which we all live,” she said.
And, she said, higher education allows students to become who they want to be personally.
“Giving young people the opportunity to achieve their own goals is absolutely critical for self-worth, self-actualization, and for allowing these young people to be the kind of society members that they want to be,” she said.
The future
Wasch said there is still a long way to go.
“Pennsylvania has made a lot of great strides in the last 10 years, and that’s everything from the passage of our unique foster education legislation to the launch of campus support programs at public, private and community colleges,” she said. “But we have a long way to go, and I think as a professional community, we can do more to support young people with experience in foster care and succeeding in higher education.”
As for Stanley, the future is hopeful. She is finishing up her senior year as a psychology major, and her post-graduation plans reflect her past and her promise.
“Last year in my junior year, I decided I wanted to go for my master’s degree in social work after graduation,” she said. “That way, I can work with foster kids and families and with children.”
The post “A long bridge”: These programs can help foster care youth attend — and succeed at — college appeared first on Billy Penn at WHYY.
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