Unsettled in America

http://chronicle.com/weekly/v52/i49/49a03201.htm

From the issue dated August 11, 2006

Many refugees in the United States struggle to find their way to college

By SARA LIPKA

Washington

Five years ago, Simon Malith left Kenya for the United States hoping to earn a bachelor's degree. Today he lives in the nation's capital, within 10 miles of a dozen colleges, but those campuses seem half a world away.
As a child, Mr. Malith fled civil war in southern Sudan. He spent nine years in Kakuma, a refugee camp in northwestern Kenya. He finished high school at the camp, where 80,000 people lived and the desert dust clung to everything.
In 2000 the U.S. State Department began to select more Sudanese refugees for resettlement. Officials interviewed them individually at Kakuma, and each week residents would gather to see a newly posted list of those who had been chosen. In February 2001, Mr. Malith saw his name, and 48 hours later, he boarded a plane bound for Washington. He carried little more than a backpack and a journal.
Mr. Malith enrolled at the University of the District of Columbia in 2002, but dropped out after two semesters because his loans were piling up and his unpredictable work schedule often interfered with his classes. Since arriving in Washington, he has held four jobs and lived in three apartments, always trying to save more money. He now works as a security guard at the Washington Convention Center, earning $14 an hour, although his hours vary each week.
There are many things Mr. Malith does not know, such as whether he is really 26 years old, as the State Department estimates. He is certain, however, that he would do well in college if he could only afford the tuition. "There is nothing that I like more," he says, "than education."
Refugees who succeed in American colleges often capture headlines. This spring a handful of Sudanese refugees earned degrees, including three from the University of New Hampshire and one from Stanford University.
But those stories, while stirring, are exceptional. In resettlement destinations as varied as Pittsburgh and Phoenix, refugees who seek higher education struggle to stay on the path to a degree. Financial difficulties, language barriers, and a lack of support from colleges keep many from succeeding.
Mr. Malith is one of the "lost boys," the name given to young Sudanese refugees, many of whom were orphaned as children. (There are relatively few "lost girls" because many of the boys, out herding cattle when their villages were attacked by militias, were able to flee.) Some 4,000 of the lost boys have settled in the United States during the past five years. About 150 of them have been placed in Boston and 150 in Chicago, where local volunteers estimate that, in each city, half have taken college classes and 15 have completed degrees.
Last year 53,813 refugees from around the world resettled in the United States. There are no reliable estimates of how many refugees go to college, however, primarily because the local agencies that coordinate the resettlement process track individual cases for only six to eight months.
Mr. Malith shares a rundown two-bedroom apartment here with five other young men from Sudan, all of whom had hoped to attend college. None are now enrolled. Unlike most students in Africa, Mr. Malith and his friends, as refugees, did not have to pay for their high-school education; they had expected to receive a free college education in the United States, too. Mr. Malith recalls that during an orientation session in Kakuma, an American aid worker described the many educational opportunities that awaited them.
"When we came to this country," Mr. Malith says, "we thought they brought us here to go to college."
Luck of the Draw
That misimpression may have set Mr. Malith's expectations, but chance has played a large role in shaping his experience in the United States.
When the State Department grants refugee status to a person, it sends his or her name and biographical information to a group of 10 agencies that coordinate the resettlement process. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service are the largest of those groups, followed by other religiously affiliated and secular organizations.
Representatives of those agencies meet weekly, in Rosslyn, Va., to decide where to settle each new group of refugees. Arrivals with relatives in the United States are permitted to join them. Many others are placed in existing ethnic communities — Iraqis in Detroit, for example, and Burmese in Indianapolis.
For most refugees, however, the luck of the draw determines where they will live. "It's basically like a draft," says Terry Abeles, director of program development at the Lutheran group.
Regional branches of those organizations lead refugees through a "reception and placement" process, which includes a whirl of applications for jobs, Social Security, and apartment leases. For their first four to eight months, refugees are eligible for modest stipends from the states where they are placed. Mr. Malith and his fellow refugees in Washington, for example, say they each received $140 per month for four months.
The problem for prospective students is that the resettlement process was designed to make refugees economically self-sufficient — not to help them get an education. In many states, refugees who enroll as full-time students automatically lose their eligibility for the monthly stipends, even if they are also employed.
Some coordinators of state refugee programs say they typically discourage newcomers from going to college. One reason: The programs' federal funds are designated for employment services only. The federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, in the Department of Health and Human Services, checks up regularly on how many refugees the state programs place in jobs within the first six months of their arrival.
"There is a lot of pressure on the system to get that person to go to work," says Bill Sperling, dean of learning services at Everett Community College, in Washington State. "If we can pry a year of ESL and a couple of quarters of job training, that's usually the maximum the system will support."
Most refugees cannot afford to pay for college on their own. Those who are dependents may qualify for student aid, but single heads of household — like most of the lost boys — are often ineligible for federal and state grants. In the 2007-8 academic year, a single head of household with no dependents and no savings would qualify for a Pell Grant only if he made less than $17,000 annually.
Where a refugee happens to settle may also affect how accessible college is to him or her. Those who live in cities or towns with a strong refugee-support network or a community-college outreach program have a better shot at an education than those who move to places without such resources.
In suburban Boston and Chicago, for instance, volunteer groups have incorporated as nonprofit organizations to raise scholarship money for local refugee students.
Two years ago the writer David Chanoff, who lives in Marlboro, Mass., founded the Sudanese Education Fund. It raises money through private donations, family foundations, and public events, like a musical revue performed by refugees last fall. The budget is now large enough to support one $1,000 grant per year for each local Sudanese refugee enrolled in college. With community-college tuition at $300 per course in Massachusetts, "sometimes it's really enabling," says Mr. Chanoff. "It makes the difference between being able to do it and not do it."
The Chicago Association of the Lost Boys of Sudan spends more than $100,000 per year on college scholarships. Mike Dubiel, president of the group, says it can pay full tuition for most of the 35 to 40 refugee students now enrolled in the area. (Full support is more likely for students at two-year colleges than for those at four-year institutions, where tuition is higher.)
Mr. Dubiel says the group's volunteers stay in touch with community-college administrators, to make sure they "know who the guys are and help them out, keep them from spinning their wheels taking classes that ... don't move them along toward an associate degree."
The Massachusetts group does the same. If a student is struggling, says Mr. Chanoff, he will talk to someone from the college on that student's behalf: "We're doing absolutely everything we can to encourage them and help them get through the different and often arcane ways that we get ourselves educated in this country."
Institutional Support
Some colleges have reached out to refugee students. In 2001 Mr. Chanoff's group took several dozen Sudanese refugees on a field trip to a dairy farm at the University of New Hampshire. Much to Mr. Chanoff's surprise, administrators there encouraged some of the young men to apply for admission.
New Hampshire officials say they wanted to diversify their student body but did not wish to admit students who were unprepared. "We wanted to make sure this wasn't being done to satisfy our objectives, our agenda, at the expense of them as individuals," says Mark Rubenstein, vice president for student and academic services. "We wanted to be comfortable that the students had the potential to be successful here."
Administrators gave the prospective students an English-language exam, allowing them to take what is normally a computerized test on paper because the refugees had little computer experience. Out of about 20 applicants, a handful scored high enough to be admitted. Five enrolled, and student-aid officers at the university gave them partial scholarships and helped them apply for loans.
Three professors became the students' closest advisers. Andrew B. Conroy, a professor of animal science, recalls spending hours tutoring Peter Guguei, one of the refugees. "I sort of kept Peter under my wing," says Mr. Conroy. "He'd pop in between classes. ... He really struggled that first year to try to overcome the language difficulty."
Mr. Guguei, who earned an associate degree in dairy management this spring, plans to pursue a bachelor's degree in political science. Three of the other students graduated this spring, and the fifth plans to finish his degree this fall.
Administrators who work closely with refugees say the students need a strong, close-knit support system to succeed. Don Beech coordinates the registration of about 500 refugees per year as cross-cultural counselor at Monroe Community College, in Rochester, N.Y. He advises new students one on one, teaching them the basics of higher education. He explains the importance of attendance and class participation and warns them not to ignore deadlines for withdrawing from a class or changing a major.
Some of the students, in a rush to finish their degrees, become overwhelmed. "They see so much they want to do here and think they can handle it," says Mr. Beech. Sometimes they skip recommended courses or underestimate how many hours they must study. Mr. Beech often refers the students to workshops on time management and test taking, or to tutors, to help them stay on track.
Pima Community College, in Tucson, is home to a program called the Refugee Education Project, which provides free English instruction. Successful participants move on to take the college's regular English-language classes. Some of those students go on to take other courses at Pima.
Raisa Bograd, an English instructor at the college, helps refugees make that transition. On Tuesday afternoons, when she is available for advising, a line forms outside her door. Refugee students bombard her with questions: Am I ready for college? How do I fill out this form? How do I apply for financial aid? "I'm just trying to prevent failures ... ," Ms. Bograd says, "to make sure they are making progress."
Some refugee students at Pima, who come from Africa, Iraq, and a variety of other places, take just one course per semester. Others drop out, although some return a year or so later, when they have more money or have hit an employment ceiling.
Others juggle full-time jobs with full-time course loads. Faridoon Abdul-Wahid, who is from Afghanistan, enrolled at Pima in 2004. He works 30 to 40 hours a week as a server at a nearby Hilton and takes as many credits per semester as he can. Mr. Abdul-Wahid, who lives with his mother and five siblings, often leaves home at 7 a.m. for classes, then works from 3 to 11 p.m. He hopes to transfer to the University of Arizona next spring, to take pre-med courses, earn his bachelor's degree, and apply to medical school.
"It is hard," he says. "But it is still possible."
Friday-Night Study Group
Mr. Malith, the refugee who settled in Washington, is much less optimistic about the prospect of balancing work and college while paying tuition. He has heard about the special scholarships for refugees in other cities, and he wishes he, too, could get one. "Luck," he says, "is not for everyone."
While large groups of the Sudanese lost boys have settled elsewhere, only a handful live in the nation's capital, where the refugees tend to blend in with a considerable population of African immigrants. Unlike Boston and Chicago, however, Washington has no advocacy group for the lost boys. Without that support network, the young men have little means of learning about scholarships at local community colleges for which they may be eligible.
When Mr. Malith started taking classes at the University of the District of Columbia, in 2002, he qualified for a Pell Grant because he had postponed working in order to have eye surgery, to correct advanced glaucoma.
By the next semester, however, he was earning $7.50 per hour stocking shelves at a Rite Aid pharmacy, and he qualified for just a loan.
One of his roommates, John A. Dut, is in a similar position. Mr. Dut, who collates newspapers at The Washington Post, met last year with an admissions counselor at Prince George's Community College, in Maryland. He keeps his placement-test scores and course-selection sheets close at hand, but he cannot come up with the $1,179 to enter a program in computer engineering. "I have the interest to do it," he says, "but not the money."
Mr. Dut regrets that he does not have more to show for the five years he has been in the United States. Each long day of work exhausts him.
Popular among the lost boys is a saying: "Education is my mother and my father." The saying, Mr. Malith explains, is based on the belief that knowledge can support and protect committed students. Mr. Dut, Mr. Malith, and their roommates occasionally chat in Dinka, their first language, but they are serious about improving their English, which is sometimes hesitant but generally very good.
They started to learn English in Kakuma, the refugee camp, where as many as 15 students shared one book. Mr. Malith looked forward to his day in the rotation. "It was very exciting when you got the book," he says. "You are happy when you are reading."
He reads often, swinging by the local branch of the public library once a week and frequenting a nearby used bookstore. Still hoping to study political science one day, he looks for political histories. Recently he has read biographies of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., James Baldwin, and Rudolph W. Giuliani.
At his apartment on a Friday night, Mr. Malith starts a discussion on constitutional rights with his roommates. He reflects on how the First Amendment applied in a Vietnam War-era case that reached the Supreme Court, in which students wearing protest armbands were suspended from their public school in Iowa.
None of the young men here have plans to go out tonight, because all but one of them have to work the next day. So they gather for what amounts to a Friday-night study group. A copy of The Washington Post and a red pocket dictionary lie open on their coffee table. A plastic clock is all that hangs on the bare white walls.
As CNN drones in the background, Mr. Dut concentrates on a copy of The Chronicle, underlining unfamiliar words and asking what they mean. David L. Deng, a friend and fellow refugee who has dropped by to visit and make use of a shared hand-me-down computer, looks up from the keyboard, where he is typing an e-mail message, and asks how to spell "hectic."
Two years ago, for four months, Mr. Dut and another of his roommates, Mac Deng, met for 12 hours of weekly language lessons with instructors from the Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages program at American University. "I am pleased with what we were able to give them, but it wasn't enough," says Brock Brady, the program's coordinator. "I've read the success stories, and I certainly don't see anything about the abilities or characters of these young men here that indicate that they shouldn't have the same success."
Mac Deng contacted Mr. Brady recently to discuss his education options. The instructor hopes to meet with Mr. Deng soon, but he is not sure what advice to offer. Mr. Brady figures he could scrape together enough of his own money to pay for Mr. Deng's first class at a local community college.
"But I'm not sure," he says, "what happens after that.

"http://chronicle.comSection: StudentsVolume 52, Issue 49, Page A32

Copyright © 2006 by The Chronicle of Higher Education