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Loyola’s Arrupe College is opening doors to higher education for local students from underserved communities / BY SCOTT ALESSI


During his senior year of high school, Osmar Cruz took a weekend job working 12-hour shifts at a restaurant about an hour from his home on Chicago’s South Side. After leaving school at 3 p.m. on Fridays, Cruz would make a brief stop back home before rushing off to start work at 6. By the time his shift ended the next morning, he’d gone 24 hours without sleep. At 6 p.m. that night he’d be back at the restaurant, ready to do it all over again. The job was exhausting. Cruz was already working four nights a


week at a martial arts school, cleaning up after practice in exchange for free lessons. The schedule started to take its toll and Cruz strug- gled to keep up with his studies. “Sometimes I couldn’t fall asleep,” he says. “I couldn’t concentrate. I was losing it.” When he took the job, Cruz was unsure of where he’d be after high


school. He worried that a college education would be too expensive and may not be an option. But as the long hours wore on him, Cruz re- calls getting some valuable advice from a coworker: If you don’t want to keep doing this kind of work, you have to get an education. Cruz knew that meant more than earning a high school diploma.


He quit his restaurant job and shifted his focus to applying for college, looking to Chicago’s city colleges as his most affordable choices. But his prospects still seemed bleak. Cruz says he knew the schools he was applying to didn’t have the best academic reputations, nor the highest graduation rates. In fact, the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center finds only 39 percent of students who enter two-year community colleges graduate within six years. And there was still the issue of cost. Though community college


Arrupe College of Loyola University Chicago student Osmar Cruz, left, exits the Chicago Red Line stop with classmate Andrea Vallejo on their way to class on the Water Tower Campus.


PHOTO BY NATALIE BATTAGLIA


is generally more affordable than a four-year university, the Institute for College Access & Success reports that the average cost to full-time students is still $15,000. Only 2 percent of students have their financial need met by grants, and for Cruz, the only guarantee he would get from attending a city college was a heavy load of student loan debt. Things changed when a teacher at Cruz’s high school told him


about Arrupe College, Loyola’s new two-year school. Designed for students like Cruz, Arrupe strives to make a high-quality Jesuit educa- tion accessible to students with limited financial resources. With the aid of grants and scholarships, Arrupe gives students an opportunity to earn an associate’s degree and to graduate with little or no debt. Cruz applied and was admitted, making him one of nearly 160 stu-


dents to enter Arrupe’s first freshman class in August 2015. Students attend either a morning or afternoon session four days a week—leav- ing the rest of their day open for work and studying—and complete


WINTER 2016 15


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