Many Oakland Students Don’t Go to College. This New Scholarship Gives Some a Chance

It’s been about a year since Angela Vergara anxiously opened an email in her Oakland Tech guidance counselor’s office that would change her life.

She was venting to her counselor about the stress of waiting for college decisions when the message from Northeastern University Oakland arrived in her inbox — she had gotten into a new partner program between the university and Oakland Unified School District offering admission and funding for four years of college.

“I cried when I saw it. I had to take a lap around the school; I could not believe it,” Vergara said this week, walking past her dorm room and the grassy, secluded campus’ mental health center. “I called my mom right away, like, ‘Mom, you won’t believe it,’ and she also cried — we all cried. It was just a really, really amazing opportunity.”

Vergara, who moved to Oakland from the Philippines in middle school, is one of seven OUSD students who started at Northeastern’s Bay Area campus this fall through the Oakland Opportunity Scholarship Program. They are the first class to enroll in the scholarship program since Northeastern University opened on the former site of Mills College in 2022 after the two merged.

Vergara applied to many schools, but she was considering going to a community college for two years to lessen the financial burden on her parents, who are already putting her two sisters — all of them first-generation college students — through school.

Through the Oakland Opportunity Scholarship Program, she will be able to graduate without debt or straining her parents’ finances. Students — who must qualify for a Pell Grant, which is awarded to students with great financial need — receive free tuition, room and board for four years of education, which comes out to more than $340,000 each, according to OUSD spokesperson John Sasaki.

The program is an extension of a similar one on Northeastern University’s Boston campus. Officials hope to expand the Oakland program from seven to 10 students in future years.

“It seemed natural when we came to Oakland to bring that kind of program here, where we’re equally invested in growing and supporting the greater Oakland community,” Northeastern Oakland Dean Daniel Sachs told KQED. “One of those ways, of course, is by supporting the youth and the students in the public school system.”

Oakland public schools have had more than their share of problems. Amid steadily declining enrollment, the district faces a huge budget deficit that could lead to a proposal to shutter some campuses, and a persistent lead contamination issue plaguing many of its schools is likely to cost tens of millions of dollars to fix.

Many students who come up through the embattled Oakland school district don’t end up in college.

In 2020, only about 44% of OUSD graduates enrolled in a four-year university or community college. That’s far below the 72% of Bay Area graduates who went to college that year, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.

Last year’s figures showed improvement, with about 35% of OUSD’s graduating seniors enrolling in four-year universities and 20% more in two-year programs, but Oakland is still behind the curve.

A scholarship model like the Oakland Opportunity program, though, helps students not only get into college but earn a degree, said Tolani Britton, a professor at UC Berkeley’s School of Education.

“Part of what the research tells us is that it’s not simply that students need more information to get to and through college. They need wraparound services,” she said. “Students are actually guaranteed housing, food, tuition and fees so that they can put their energies in many ways towards succeeding in that environment as opposed to trying to figure out how they stay there.”

The scholarship students applied through the general Northeastern application and selected the Oakland campus as their top choice for their first year. Most were nominated by a counselor or another staff member at their high school.

After the OUSD students complete their first year in Oakland, they can choose to stay in the Bay Area or transfer to any of Northeastern’s 13 campuses in three countries.

If more local students attend college close to home and potentially join the workforce there after they graduate, it benefits the whole community economically, Britton said. But whether they stay in the area or not, it can also affect future generations of students.

“In addition to the resources you’re bringing after you graduate to your family, there’s also, I absolutely believe, a role model factor, particularly if you’re still local,” Britton said. “You may have that younger cousin who didn’t necessarily see four-year college as a possibility. That younger cousin then sees you graduate and the opportunity that you had. It means something about what is possible.”

Vergara, who is studying politics, philosophy and economics, plans to transfer to Boston next fall.

“I’m definitely making the most out of my opportunity,” she said. “My plan is [that] after this year, I’m going to transition to Boston and then hopefully London and as many campuses as I can.”

She’s most excited about the opportunity to do one of Northeastern’s cooperative education programs, which connect students with semester-long, full-time work experiences. Vergara isn’t 100% sure what she wants to pursue after graduation, but she said she hopes to explore law during her co-op semester.

“The campus is in the heart of Boston, which opens you up to so many opportunities,” she said. “There’s lots of law firms there that [Northeastern] has connections with.”

While she’s in Oakland, though, she’s already taking full advantage of the school’s resources. She’s a part of the campus’ Trailblazer Program, which connects first-generation students before they begin their first year and provides them with additional advising and monthly meetings to learn about campus resources.

Vergara took a school-sponsored trip to Lake Tahoe this fall and has joined clubs on campus, like the Women’s Interdisciplinary Society of Entrepreneurship, whose tech networking event she was headed to with her roommate Tuesday afternoon. Then, she was rushing over to economics office hours and studying for midterms later in the week.

She said navigating the first few weeks of freshman year has been challenging but exciting.

“At first, it was overwhelming because I’m new to campus; I didn’t know anything,” she said. “But I just remember we’re all in the same boat.”