Foster youth in Arizona face steep odds getting into college, and even steeper odds when it comes to finishing. A local nonprofit is trying to change that.
For many young adults who have aged out of the foster system, college comes without the family safety net most students rely on. This means many foster teens face higher barriers not only to enter college, but to complete it.
Arizona Friends of Foster Children Foundation lends a helping hand, supporting students beyond enrollment and through graduation.
Among students who experience foster care, between 29% and 64% enroll in post-secondary education, but only 8% to 12% complete a two- or four-year degree, according to a 2025 study led by Nathanael Okpych of the University of Connecticut and published by the American Educational Research Association.
By comparison, in 2023, 48.9% of all Arizona residents aged 25 to 64 had completed a two- or four-year degree, or had an active professional certificate or license, according to the Arizona Education Progress Meter by Education Forward Arizona.
Luis De La Cruz, CEO of Arizona Friends of Foster Children Foundation, emphasized that while foster youth college graduation rates are still low, they have grown.
“That 8-12% that we tend to see in graduation rates, it’s up from 3%,” De La Cruz said. “And so what it tells you is that a lot of these solutions are actually working. We just need to double down on them, and we’ve got to keep pushing them.”
De La Cruz, a former foster youth himself, was connected to Arizona Friends of Foster Children Foundation through his adoptive parents and earned two undergraduate business degrees from Arizona State University. Now, he leads the foundation, helping other foster youth access scholarships and resources to complete college.
As a former foster youth, De La Cruz knows well the barriers to post-secondary attainment. The initial challenge, he reckons, is “the ability to dare to dream.”
“Oftentimes, being in foster care means that there’s a series of things that has happened in your life that perhaps means that you don’t know that you can dare to dream to finish high school and go on and become a doctor, a lawyer – in my case, a CEO or a strategist for big companies,” De La Cruz said.
“And so the ability to dare to dream, I think, is limited sometimes because of those experiences that lead us to … foster care.”
The Arizona Friends of Foster Children Foundation offers two scholarship programs to help students get their foot in the door, its general post-secondary scholarship and the Barbara Polk Healthcare Scholarship.
The Arizona Friends of Foster Children Foundation Scholarship is available to current and former foster youth ages 17 to 24 who are enrolled in a university, college or community college and maintain at least a 2.0 grade point average.
Awards range from $2,000 to $5,000 per year, depending on the institution.
For students who want to join the healthcare field, the Barbara Polk Healthcare Scholarship supports foster youth pursuing undergraduate or graduate healthcare degrees, with a higher GPA requirement and multi-semester funding designed for students in demanding clinical programs.
The foundation’s scholarships are available to students who are currently or were previously in foster care and reached – or will reach– age 18 as a ward of the state of Arizona.
However, the challenges don’t just disappear or become smaller once a current or former foster youth gets their foot in the door, De La Cruz emphasized.
For students who have aged out of the foster care system and lack a traditional support network, even a single setback can quickly unravel their path through college.
A car breakdown, for example, can set off a cascading problem. Without reliable transportation, a student may struggle to get to class. To cover repair costs, they may pick up extra shifts at work, leaving less time for coursework while also spending more money on alternative transportation.
What begins as a mechanical issue can quickly turn into missed classes, financial strain and a growing risk of falling behind or dropping out completely.
Housing can create similar challenges, De La Cruz notes.
“If you end up living on campus…what happens when the semester ends? What happens when parents are lining up to pick up their kids because the dorms are going to close? Who picks them up? The truth is that the answer is often nobody,” De La Cruz said.
In such cases, without a family home to return to, students can face housing instability that compounds other challenges, making it even harder to stay enrolled and succeed academically.
“These barriers that exist in their lives – having no traditional support system – tends to mean that if something goes wrong, it goes very wrong, and they deprioritize their education,” De La Cruz said.
The Arizona Friends of Foster Children Foundation understands that getting into college is one thing, but finishing is another. Thus, the nonprofit offers financial assistance for those unexpected obstacles, like a car repair or housing insecurity.
The Focus Forward Fund is available to help students with those not-so-small problems so they can move forward with their education journeys.
Students from 16 to 27 years old who are currently or were previously in foster care, through Focus Forward, may request financial assistance for items in four categories: educational, emergency, empowerment, and vocational studies.
Under the educational category, students may request assistance with items such as laptops, textbooks, and on-campus housing deposits.
Through the emergency category, the foundation provides financial assistance for matters outside of the educational institution, to make sure students keep their focus on school. Students can request assistance for things such as auto repairs, rent, and utilities and internet service.
Under the empowerment category, students can request financial assistance for exam preparation courses for medical school, law school and other graduate programs, college and university membership organization fees such as Greek life, and study abroad costs.
Lastly, under the vocational studies or certificate programs category, students can request assistance with vocational tuition and fees or vocational program supplies, such as welding supplies for a welding program.
All items in each category are subject to limits on dollar amounts and the number of times a student can request assistance within a given period. Overall, students can make up to two requests per quarter of the calendar year, or every three months. Students cannot request the same category more than once in a 12-month period unless otherwise stated in category guidelines.
De La Cruz praised current initiatives that support foster youth in their post-secondary journeys, such as Arizona State University’s Bridging Success program and state legislation that requires public universities and community colleges to provide a tuition waiver scholarship to eligible current and former foster youth.
Still, he noted that many students face obstacles these programs – including those at the foundation – cannot fully address alone.
“We can’t just give scholarships to kids so that they can get to college,” De La Cruz said. “It’s about, can we get them to graduate? And that’s what we need to be doing.
“We need to be focused on deploying the solutions and the support to get them to graduate, because that’s the name of the game. And if we’re not doing that, then we’re not doing a good job.”