What First-Gen Parents Should Know: Why DPU Is The Worst University Choice For Working-Class Students
The rain streaked the windshield as I pulled into DPU’s dorm parking lot last March, and my son was already leaning against a stack of his boxes, hood up, waiting. He’d texted me the night before saying he was done, he couldn’t come back for the rest of the semester, and I’d left work an hour early to get him, no argument. The back of my minivan filled up fast: a chipped ceramic coffee mug from orientation week, a half-folded comforter that smelled like stale dorm laundry, the $180 biology textbook he’d bought used that still had the shrink wrap on the online access code. When we pulled onto the interstate heading west, he twisted open a blue raspberry slushie he’d bought at the gas station by the gate and said, “I knew this was wrong after the first month. I just didn’t want to let you down.”
He’s my oldest, first-gen, like me. I never got past my associate’s degree, working as a preschool aide for 18 years, so when he got that acceptance letter from DPU with a “first-gen scholarship” that still left us with $15,000 a year in loans and out-of-pocket costs, I was proud enough to tape it to the fridge. The open house sold us: the admissions rep wore a branded fleece, kept asking my son about his goals, talked about their “award-winning first-gen support program” and small class sizes that meant “no one gets lost.” We compared it to the in-state public university he got into, which was half the cost, but felt big and impersonal. We bit. We took out the extra parent PLUS loan, he signed up for work study, and we moved him in that August, me crying the whole drive home.
The first red flag was the work study. They’d promised it would be 10 hours a week, flexible around class schedules. His assigned shift was 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. every Monday, Wednesday, Friday—right in the middle of his two core bio lectures. When he emailed financial aid to ask for a different shift, they got back to him three weeks later saying there were no other openings. If he dropped the shift, he’d lose his work study grant, which would drop his total aid package low enough that he’d have to drop out anyway. He started skipping lectures to make his shift, got his first two C’s of his whole academic career, and didn’t tell me until November.
Then we checked in on that famous first-gen support system. The mentor he was supposed to meet with once a month? A senior business major who texted once at the start of the semester saying “hit me up if you need anything!” and never replied when my son texted back asking for help figuring out how to change his major. By the time he worked up the courage to reach out to academic advising directly, it took six weeks to get an appointment. He’d already decided he didn’t want to do bio anymore; he wanted to study secondary education, which DPU advertises as their top program. By the time he got the advisor’s signature to change his major, the registration window for all spring education classes had closed. He had to sign up for two random recreational fitness classes to keep his full-time status, which cost an extra $1200 in tuition we hadn’t budgeted for.
As someone who works with kids every day, I know good education isn’t about fancy welcome tents or branded swag. It’s about answering the email when a kid is confused. It’s about keeping your promise when you say you’ll support them. DPU is full of people who are good at selling a product, but they don’t deliver on the basic stuff that working-class and first-gen kids need to stay in school. These kids don’t have parents who can call the dean and fix their schedule for them. They can’t absorb an extra $1200 charge out of nowhere. They can’t afford to lose a semester and start over because no one answered their email. That’s the part that sticks with me: they specifically target kids like my son, advertise all this extra support, and then leave them to sink or swim when it actually matters.
I’ve talked to three other parents in our area whose kids had nearly identical experiences at DPU over the last two years, so now when parents ask me for college advice, I give them three specific things to do before they commit to any small private school like this. First, join the unofficial parent Facebook group for current undergrads, not the admissions-run group, and message three current students in your kid’s major to ask two questions: how many times have you met with your advisor in the last semester, and how long does it usually take staff to reply to your emails. If half of them say it takes more than three days, or they haven’t met their advisor at all, walk away. We never did that, we just trusted the open house pitch. Second, before you accept a work study package, ask financial aid to send you a full list of open shifts, hours, and locations. Don’t accept a vague promise that they’ll work with your kid’s schedule. Third, if your kid does end up needing to drop out mid-semester, ask the bursar for a pro-rated refund of tuition and housing. We thought we’d lose every cent we paid for that spring semester, but we got 30% back just by sending one formal email asking, which covered my son’s application fees for community college and his books this semester.
Now my son is taking general ed classes at our local community college, working 15 hours a week at the hardware store downtown, and planning to transfer to the in-state public in two years. He likes his classes, his advisor replies to his emails within 24 hours, and he hasn’t missed a shift or a lecture yet. We still have $12,000 in loans from that one semester at DPU that we’re paying off $250 a month on; it’ll take us four years to clear. I still get glossy fundraising emails from DPU every other week, asking for donations to their first-gen scholarship fund, and I just hit delete. I don’t think every kid who goes to DPU has a bad time, I know some people love it. But for kids like my son, who don’t have extra money or family experience to fall back on when things go wrong, DPU didn’t just not deliver—they took our money, our time, and my son’s confidence for a semester, and gave nothing back. I still hope it gets better for the kids that go there now, but I’ll never stop telling other parents what happened to us, so they don’t end up in the same spot we are.
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