Just one year into a three-year effort to re-enroll adult learners in California who previously attended but did not complete college, the initiative known as California Reconnect appears to be having some success. Seven colleges are boosting re-enrollment rates to four times higher than the national average.

About 5,700 former students who previously stopped out have been contacted by the campaign, and of those, around 480, or 8.4 percent, have re-enrolled. Comparatively, the national re-enrollment rate was 2.1 percent in 2021–22.

Michelle Soto knows how difficult it can be to find affordable child care. As a mother of three young children, she juggles family responsibilities with math and writing classes at El Paso Community College to strengthen the English skills she needs to pursue her associate degree in court reporting.

EPCC's new Family College program will help student parents like Soto, taking the burden of child care off their plate by caring for their children and providing them with fun, age-appropriate classes.

Iveth Díaz has spent much of her career helping immigrant students living in the United States illegally navigate college. But when her own application to renew her work permit and temporary protection from deportation was delayed because of backlogs, she had to resign from her job for three months.

Díaz and other college and university employees with work permits and protection under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program are calling on universities to do more to help them prepare for alternative employment plans in case the program ends.