Affluent Students Displaced by Katrina Find World of Options, While Others Must Put Education on Hold

By ELIZABETH F. FARRELL

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For a few days in the past month, students in the Gulf Coast region were all in a similar situation. None were thinking about registering for classes or buying books. Most concentrated on evacuating the area, staying safe, and taking care of their basic needs for food, water, and shelter.

But after the initial shock of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath wore off, the differences between richer and poorer students began to re-emerge. Despite many generous offers of free tuition and other donations from colleges around the country and the world, students displaced by the hurricane who came from affluent backgrounds had much more flexibility in continuing their educations than those with fewer financial resources.

While some students were able to take advantage of admissions offers from faraway institutions, others were left not only without a college to attend but also without a home to live in. No one had an easy time -- even those who could afford to replace all of their lost belongings had endured a life-threatening disaster. But students from wealthier families were far more likely to stay in college than those who were struggling to pay for an education even before the storm hit.

In many instances, students who had been among the least affected by the hurricane reaped the biggest benefits from it, while those who had lost more than a dormitory room of possessions cast about to find educational opportunities as they attempted to pick up their lives without homes or jobs.

Because of the ad hoc approach that most colleges took to accommodating displaced students, there was no way to guarantee that all students would be treated fairly. The inaccessibility of financial and academic records, combined with the crunch for time to get students registered before classes started, meant that colleges that wanted to help had little time to figure out which students most needed their generosity.

"We were more interested in thinking about these students positively rather than negatively," says Michael J. Bell, provost at Franklin Pierce College, a New Hampshire institution that offered displaced students free tuition, books, long-distance telephone service, and room and board without screening for financial need. "We didn't ask them any questions about that, because they are all good kids, and most of them have nothing right now."

A 'Lucky' Education Major

Amy Videkovich, an elementary-education major at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College, says she is lucky. A tree fell through the middle of her house, in Ocean Springs, Miss., and eight inches of water flooded the first floor, ruining most of her furniture and all of the baby pictures of her 7-year-old daughter.

"There is still that squishy sound when you walk on the carpet, and it just stinks in the house," says Ms. Videkovich, who is 27. Her husband will tear out all of the rugs and replace the plasterboard on weekends.

But the damage has left the couple no choice but to relocate. They are living with their two young children in a spare bedroom at her brother-in-law's house, in Woodstock, Ga., about 400 miles away from home.

The past few weeks have been a flurry of logistical challenges. Ms. Videkovich has scurried to register her children in Georgia public schools and to find a job to replace the one she lost. Despite all that has happened, though, she feels fortunate. Having her family alive is a blessing, she says. Her husband, who had just accepted a job as a slot-machine technician at the now-ruined Hard Rock Casino, in Biloxi, Miss., will continue to be paid for 90 days, and the company has assured him that he will have a job after that.

With everything that has disrupted her life, Ms. Videkovich says her education is the only constant. Although she cannot yet return to Mississippi Gulf Coast's Perkinston campus to take classes, she is taking a full course load of 12 credits online. Her brother-in-law has a computer she can use.

"I didn't want to lose my hopes and dreams, too," she says. "I'm going to do whatever I have to do to be an elementary-school teacher."

'The Most Vulnerable'

But the damage done by Katrina has made returning to college impossible for many other community-college students, who are stretched thin between work and family obligations. David S. Baime, vice president for government relations at the American Association of Community Colleges, says thousands of the two million community-college students in the Gulf Coast region will not be able to take classes this semester, and their educations will be on hold indefinitely, maybe even permanently.

"We think, in general, our students are among the most vulnerable because they tend to be of lesser means and have more responsibility than students in other sectors" of higher education, says Mr. Baime.

Although community colleges around the country have been just as generous as their four-year counterparts in opening their doors to affected students, he says, family obligations and jobs keep many students from being able to take advantage of those offers.

The opportunity to attend another college would be ideal for Ashley Ladnier, a nursing student at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College who is from McHenry, Miss. She was supposed to have begun her clinical rotation at a hospital this fall, but the damage to hospitals in the area has made that impossible. Ms. Ladnier says she has not pursued any of the free-tuition offers from community colleges elsewhere, however, because she has too many family obligations in McHenry.

"I'm not in a situation where I can just pack my things up and move," she says. "My husband has been working longer hours since the hurricane, and there is no one to watch my daughter."

A lack of child-care options is likely to keep many students in affected areas out of the classroom, says Cheryl Thompson-Stacy, vice president for academic instruction and student affairs at Mississippi Gulf Coast.

"Dealing with child care is a real problem for them," she says. "The local school systems have yet to open, and a lot of the child-care facilities are no longer existent or aren't open for business."

She hopes that a special, second nine-week semester, beginning on October 24, will give such students the extra time they may need to get their lives in order before returning to their studies.

"We are losing a lot of students right now," says Ms. Thompson-Stacy. As of this week, she was unsure how many students would be able to return; the community college had offered late registration, through Tuesday, because of the hurricane.

The problem is not unique to community-college students, says Norman C. Francis, president of Xavier University of Louisiana. He is concerned that his students, 85 percent of whom received financial aid before Katrina, may not be able to return to college because of hurricane-related financial problems. Mr. Francis is lobbying the federal government to provide up to $10,000 per student in additional grant money to make sure that students do return once the college reopens.

French Quarter or France

Alexa B. Erck, a Tulane University sophomore who left New Orleans the day before Katrina ravaged the city, feels just as lucky as Ms. Videkovich, but for a different reason. The Illinois native had resigned herself to missing out on studying abroad because of the grueling course requirements in her biology major, but after Tulane closed down and she could not get the courses she needed elsewhere, Ms. Erck realized that the storm had opened the way overseas. She quickly went online and signed up for American University's study-abroad program in Paris.

Her parents had already paid the fall semester's tuition at Tulane, but they agreed that studying in France was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so they advanced her the additional $9,700 for tuition and $425 per month for a flat with a view of the Arc de Triomphe. Ms. Erck will cover expenses for groceries, entertainment, and trips around Europe with a combination of her summer-job savings and credit-card advances from her parents.

"My parents are so generous and I really, really lucked out," she says. "I haven't lost anything. Everything in my dorm room is fine. ... I think I'm in the best situation. But I feel really bad that something good has come out of all this for me."

Although she has discussed the hurricane with classmates in her French course in Paris, her lack of television and Internet access there make what happened in New Orleans feel very far away. Weekly art-appreciation lectures at the Louvre and the Cathedral of Notre Dame, combined with trips to the Eiffel Tower and Euro Disney on weekends, make the hurricane experience seem even more distant.

Noah Kressler, a third-year law student from Tulane, also had an unexpectedly pleasant surprise from Katrina. Two days after the storm hit, he contacted admissions officers at the law schools of Columbia University, New York University, Stanford University, and Yale University, and all opened their doors to him after he told them of his high grade-point average and class rank, he says.

"If I were a first-year student, that would be my list of dream schools to get into," says Mr. Kressler, who chose Columbia because of its reputation and the network of friends he has there. "Columbia's offer to waive tuition has been a blessing for me."

The downside of the impromptu transfer to Columbia is that he cannot take the classes he wanted in order to complete his concentration in sports-management law. And his laptop computer, with two years' worth of work on a law paper, is still in his French Quarter apartment. But other things about Columbia are convenient. The school had an on-campus studio apartment ready for him, and he was already familiar with New York City because he had grown up in the suburbs.

The cost of a semester at Columbia or study abroad in Paris is a lot higher than a semester at a community college. But it is easier to find temporary spaces in other areas of the country for traditional students than to rebuild the lives of Gulf Coast natives who lost much more than an opportunity to go to college.

"The problems that the nontraditional students are facing are harder to fix," says Frank D. Sachs, president of the National Association for College Admission Counseling. "Those solutions are going to take a longer period of time. But I think that once the dust settles, they will find that institutions are willing to help them as best they can."

Stephen Burd contributed to this report.