When Alexandria Davis decided to pursue a two-year degree, she did everything she could to make the finances work. She had a job doing food prep at a café, and she sold baked goods at farmers markets near her Richmond home. That was in addition to taking classes and completing assignments on time.
“I was working crazy hours,” Davis, 26, said. “I was not sleeping a lot.”
Davis is used to operating without a safety net. She spent about a year in foster care and said she never really had family she could lean on.
“We don't have room to mess up,” she said of her experience as a former foster kid. “You have to be a lot more strategic. You really don't have a backup plan.”
That means big plans, like earning a degree, can easily get derailed — which almost happened to Davis when she got into a difficult situation with her then live-in partner and had to move.
"There was definitely an urgency to get out," she said.
The only problem: She didn’t have enough money for a new place.
She decided to look for help and applied for emergency funding through her school, Brightpoint Community College. That’s when she learned about a program offered by Virginia’s Community College System specifically for students like her.
Great Expectations was designed to help people who grew up in foster care get their two-year degrees. The mostly privately-funded program, started over 15 years ago, and provides financial and emotional support to community college students of all ages — no matter how long they’ve been out of foster care.
The program is in every community college in Virginia; each college has a designated coach who works with students and organizes events, so students in the program can get to know each other.
Great Expectations also provides a limited number of monthly stipends for housing, as well as emergency funding. When Davis needed to move, the program awarded her money for both.
“It feels like they saved my life in a way,” Davis said of Great Expectations. Without that help, she said, “I think I would have dropped out of school because I would go back into that same cycle of realizing, ‘Hey, I can't afford this.’”
Instead, Davis is working on her bachelor’s. After completing her associate degree, she transferred to Virginia Commonwealth University, where she’s studying marketing — and plans to also pursue a master’s degree.
'Their students are graduating, they’re getting degrees'
People who grew up in foster care often navigate so many challenges in adulthood, college can feel out of reach.
According to 2021 data from the U.S. Census Bureau, 10.5% of the overall population had completed an associate degree by age 25. And while there are no national numbers, state and regional studies have found former foster youth earn degrees at a lower rate.
An analysis of a 2011 study of three Midwestern states found 3.7% of students who’d been in foster care completed an associate degree. In a 2020 California study, 6% of students who had been in foster care finished two-year degrees.
But the two-year graduation rate for the approximately 5,000 Virginia students who’ve gone through Great Expectations over the years is higher: 9.5%.
“Their students are graduating, they're getting degrees and they're entering the workforce, and they're doing really well,” said Allison Gilbreath, policy director of the nonprofit advocacy organization Voices for Virginia’s Children.
While over a dozen other states have statewide initiatives to help foster youth complete college degrees, not a lot of them look like Great Expectations.
The program’s approach serves “as a national model for other states who wish to ensure that their students with experience in foster care have holistic support to navigate the transition to and through a community college system and beyond,” according to Maddy Day, founder of the Fostering Academic Achievement Network.
'It’s not something that you can just muscle through on your own'
Keona Beamon, 35, spent most of her teenage years in foster care. At 18, she said she became unhoused.
Today, with help from Great Expectations, Beamon is two semesters from finishing her business administration degree at Richmond’s Reynolds Community College.
Late last year, Beamon met with her Great Expectations coach, Karen Cole. She asked Beamon how she’s feeling about the next semester’s class load.
“I’m very confident, especially now that I’m almost done,” Beamon replied.
She told Cole she was accepted to a nearby HBCU, Virginia State University, where she plans to complete her bachelor’s degree.
“I’m so happy, and so proud of you,” Cole said.
When they check in, Cole provides Beamon with regular encouragement — something Beamon didn’t really experience growing up.
“People in the foster care system really need that push, that motivation,” Beamon said.
Thinking back on her teenage years, she said she never really felt like she had much support.
“You just feel alone, like you really want your mother and your father to be the one who pick up all the pieces, and they're just not there,” she said.
That’s a common feeling among foster youth.
Nathanael Okpych studies educational outcomes for people in foster care at the University of Connecticut. He said students who have experienced a lot of relationship disruption can have a difficult time trusting the adults and supports designed to help them through college. That, in turn, can impact academic success.
“Some of them take on this kind of very guarded, self-reliant stance, which serves them well in other areas, but when they're in college, it's new. It's really difficult. It's not something that you can just muscle through on your own,” Okpych explained. “You really need to rely on other people.”
'No one can dream when they don’t have anywhere to sleep'
Almost one-third of youth who transition out of foster care report being unhoused between the ages of 19 and 21, and 1 in 5 report being incarcerated, according to the latest data from the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s KIDS COUNT Data Center.
Gilbreath, of Voices for Virginia’s Children, said that’s why housing stipends — like the kind Great Expectations provides to students of all ages — are especially critical.
“Housing is the foundation,” Gilbreath said. “When you feel like you are in a safe housing situation that's stable, you can start to think about the bigger picture. You can start to think about: ‘What do I want? What are my dreams?' No one can dream when they don't have anywhere to sleep.”
There are some federal programs designed to support people who grew up in foster care as they enter adulthood — but you have to be younger than 25 or 26 or apply.
Those age limits aren’t uncommon for programs that support former foster youth. It’s why, as someone in her 30s, Beamon worried she wouldn’t qualify for Great Expectations. She was relieved when she learned the program didn’t have age restrictions.
She said the financial and emotional support she’s received have both helped her stay in school. She’s been receiving a monthly housing stipend of $400 and used emergency assistance to get out of a difficult housing situation. She’s also received gift cards to help with other expenses and transportation.
“Four-hundred dollars really goes a long ways, and then to actually give it to you for a whole year … . [I]t just was a really big blessing for me,” Beamon said. “It's still a blessing for me.”
The program also recently inspired state lawmakers to fund more support for students at Virginia’s four-year colleges. Legislation ensuring that current and former foster youth don’t have to pay tuition or room and board at Virginia public colleges and universities took effect earlier this year.