For Foster Care Kids, College Degrees Are Elusive

Since she was 2, Alexis Barries has bounced from foster home to group home to finally, a place of her own. She’s got dreams of becoming an attorney, and even started college early, at 16.

Eight years and five community colleges later, the Californian is still a freshman, working her way through school at an exceedingly slow pace, punctuated by a frustrating series of stops and starts, from financial aid snafus to housing mix-ups. Without an adult to help her figure things out, she says, the obstacles she encountered took on Kafkaesque proportions.

“I wasn’t prepared for college. I didn’t have parents or anyone to look up to or help me with my college experience,” said Barries, who lives in Stockton, California, where she now attends San Joaquin Delta College.

“I completely fell down.”

At a time when many parents help their children navigate every twist and turn of their academic lives, former and current foster youth have a particularly difficult path. If they don’t have a parental figure to guide them, they’re often left on their own to maneuver through the maze of college applications and financial aid paperwork.

Some states are stepping up efforts to give them more guidance and support.

More