My name is Serabi Magebo. I was born and raised in Kenya. I moved to the United States at the age of 17 with my father, mother, and 8 year old sister. I had to finish my last year of high school here. There was a cultural difference between here and back in Kenya. My schooling experience was much different and it was a difficult adjustment. Back in Kenya, we did all our school work handwritten and there were no computers. The teachers were also a big change.
After high school, I was going to attend Central Washington University, but one week prior to classes starting, I had to make the decision to attend Everett Community College. This mainly had to do with the cost difference between a university and a local community college. If I had attended Central, I would have had to ask for student loans, which is something I didn’t want to do. I tried applying for FAFSA and WASFA, but I wasn’t able to complete the process because of my legal status at the time and the tax information they asked for. With this being said, my parents are currently paying for my tuition to continue my college education. I plan to transfer to Bellevue Community College and as of right now paying for my tuition to attend Bellevue will continue to be a challenge for me and my family. I will continue studying information technology and focus on achieving my goal of working for cyber security.
I do believe that making college cheaper or even free would be better for everyone. Colleges would be much more accessible for those who want to attend and get their college degree. There would be no worrying about high cost tuition. Like I mentioned before, I had to make the difficult decision of choosing between going to a 4 year university or a local community college. This was because I didn’t qualify for either FAFSA or WASFA. My parents have been paying out of pocket for my tuition because of this reason. Keeping this in mind, I was also not able to explore other career options and had to be certain of the career I wanted to pursue. If college were more affordable or free, I believe that our graduation rates would go up and it would take students less time to complete college courses in Washington State. This is mainly because many students end up dropping out of college due to financial reasons. Another reason is because a large number of students take only 1 to 2 classes per quarter because of the affordability of college.
Serabi Magebo, Everett