Another challenge you’re likely to face when aging out of foster care is education. Unfortunately, you may have moved around a lot while growing up in the system. Each new foster placement also means a new school, new classes, and an unfamiliar curriculum. Since not every class is teaching the same topics at the same time, it is very easy to encounter problems and fall behind the pace of your peers. In fact, 60% of fosters drop out without a high school diploma. Only 2% pursue a college degree, even though 70% of fosters report have a desire to attend college. Without proper education, fosters find themselves on a constrained career path, working low-skilled jobs for minimum-wage pay. As a result, fosters tend to leave jobs and experience periods of unemployment more frequently than others.
