SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — More than 22% of adults in San Diego County read at a fourth-grade level or lower, but a local college is helping them overcome that barrier and achieve their educational goals.
Monica Moysen will get her undergraduate degree from San Diego State University next spring, but the road to that diploma didn't come easy.
"If it wasn't for ECC, they gave me the foundation I needed to be able to reach my goals, reach for the stars," Moysen said.
Moysen dropped out of high school, but in 2017 she enrolled at the San Diego College of Continuing Education, a campus in the San Diego Community College District that offers tuition-free programs such as ESL, GED, and adult basic education.
"I always like to think about our college as just a guided pathway to directly what the students want to do," said Dr. Tina King, the school's president.
Dr. King said many students come to the U.S. with professional degrees already, but have to start over here.
"They have to start over from ground zero. So we give them the support with the language acquisition, the language literacy, so that they're able to have the fundamentals of the English language," Dr. King said.
Moysen grew up in San Diego and, after graduating from the College of Continuing Education, got two associate degrees and got into SDSU. She's now applying to grad school, but it was at the SDCCE campus that she perfected her reading and writing.
"So they gave me the foundation of reading, writing, and being able to articulate. As I look back at my writing from when I first started community college to now, it all is thanks to ECC," Moysen said.
These no-cost opportunities are only the beginning for adults looking to learn something new and get ahead.
"It's really rewarding when we see students who come in at entry level, or they come in because they've never had the experience to navigate higher education, and they're successful here," Dr. King said.
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