Plenty of immigrant students are being locked out of universities even though they can afford to pay for their tuition fees. A university in Delaware, however, is collaborating with a national scholarship program to help those young immigrants attain a college education.
The Delaware State University has partnered with TheDream.US, a privately funded scholarship program launched in 2013. According to a report from ABC News, the program will offer scholarships even to those immigrants without legal status in the U.S.
States That Lock Out Students
The new scholarship program will provide education opportunities to students living in states that prohibit them from enrolling in colleges. Those states are Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, West Virginia and Wisconsin, ABC News listed.
How The Scholarship Program Works
For the scholarship program, TheDream.US will give 500 scholarships worth $20,000 for four years. Potential scholarship awardees should be high school graduates and are listed under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, a federal policy enacted in 2012. DACA awards a renewable, two-year work permit and a Social Security number to immigrants -- as long as they came to the U.S. before 2007 before they turned 16 years of age.
According to Donald Graham, co-founder of TheDream.US and the CEO of the Washington Post Company, there's a huge possibility that the program will extend to two other states sooner or later. The scholarship program said no state money is involved in the Connecticut and Delaware colleges. Officials also emphasized that both colleges are capable of accepting immigrant students under the program and enrolling other students who are not immigrants, ABC News wrote.
Aside from DSU, the Eastern Connecticut State University also partnered with TheDream.US to offer scholarships to immigrant students, the Delaware News Journal wrote. Lucky students who will be awarded scholarships will start classes in the fall.
Immigrant Students Often Have Incomplete Education
Around 65,000 undocumented immigrant students graduate from high school annually, the Washington Post reported. The exact figure isn't determined by the U.S. government, given that school officials are prohibited from acquiring information about students' immigration standing.
Undocumented immigrant students have low chances of graduating from high school or going to college. Only 72 percent of undocumented immigrant students finish high school, and only 61 percent out of that proportion attend college, the news outlet further reported from a 2008 study by the Pew Hispanic Center.
