We’re excited to see foster care program continue to grow, and we hope the university considers establishing similar programs for other underserved portions of the university population.
College can be tough to tackle, and if the odds are stacked against you, it could be overwhelming.
As you may have read in a story published Thursday by The Post, Ohio University has recently made strides toward helping emancipated foster care youth feel at home in Athens.
For the first time, the university has given next year’s incoming class the option to request information about resources available to foster youth. It has also began to build a support network for former foster youth who attend OU.
Both are quality initiatives that will be valuable to the students involved.
Only about 2 to 9 percent of foster youth who graduate high school end up earning a bachelor's degree, and one student quoted in our story said there’s a prevailing stereotype that foster youths don’t go to college. The university is right to realize these things and take initiative to improving them here.
OU’s Office of Multicultural Student Access and Retention is working alongside the Ohio Reach Program, a statewide higher-education resource group for foster youth, to better provide for an underserved population here.
That begins with identifying them — a difficult task in years past that has been made easier by giving students the option to identify as foster youth during their application to the university. And it continues through their application process and arrival on campus, when university officials ensure such students know about the resources available for them.
We hope that the university’s efforts to support foster youth continue to grow over the coming years. It’s important that underserved portions of the university population have the opportunity to thrive, and we’re glad OU has allocated resources to ensure that’s the case for foster children who choose to attend school here.
We’re excited to see this program continue to grow, and we hope the university considers establishing similar programs for other underserved portions of the university population.
For web: Editorials represent the majority opinion of The Post's executive editors: editor-in-chief Jim Ryan, managing editor Sara Jerde, opinion editor Xander Zellner and projects editor Allan Smith. Post editorials are independent of the publication's news coverage.
