At 10 years, Arrupe College’s success story provides a model for others
September 4, 2025
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John Cooke (AA ’23, BS ’27) didn’t think he’d be able to go to college.
He attended a high-performing charter school in Chicago, with a big smile and the personality to match. But the COVID-19 pandemic had taken a toll on his family, and his plan was to work full time at a staffing agency to help his grandmother with bills and other expenses. He hoped to attend a four-year college one day, but he thought he could only invest in his education if he was on solid financial footing, and who knew when that would be? “It was not in the game plan at the time,” says Cooke.
A conversation with his high school adviser placed him on a different path, leading him straight to Loyola University Chicago’s Arrupe College, which offers a first-of-its-kind, rigorous two-year program for low-income students. Cooke now holds an associate degree in liberal arts and is pursuing his bachelor’s degree on a pre-med track at Loyola University Chicago. For the past two years, he’s spent his summers interning at the Department of Radiation Oncology at the University of Iowa, where he researched glioblastoma, an aggressive type of brain tumor. His goal is to one day become a pediatric surgeon.
“Going to Arrupe turned out to be the best decision I’ve ever made in my life,” Cooke says.
Since its inception, Arrupe College has set out to provide an affordable pathway to four-year colleges for students like Cooke—historically underrepresented, first-generation, low-income, high-potential students who need financial and academic support to make college feasible. Founded in 2015 under the guidance of Father Steve Katsouros, S.J., the college offers affordable, two-year degree programs comprising 62 fully transferable credits that students can use toward a bachelor’s degree at a four-year institution.
What is truly groundbreaking about Arrupe, leaders say, is that all students benefit from robust wraparound services that offer them financial, academic, and emotional support during their studies. These services include access to social workers, career counselors, and transfer coordinators, as well as resources like free laptops, CTA passes, daily meals, and emergency financial assistance. Their college experience is also defined by small classes taught by full-time faculty members who play the dual role of professors and advisers.
The result? Eighty-three percent of Arrupe students who graduate on time go on to a bachelor’s degree program, and 61% of Arrupe graduates earn a bachelor’s degree in six years (compared to national averages of 48% and 16%, respectively). Since all students qualify for financial aid and the average out-of-pocket cost of attendance is less than $2,000 per year, an overwhelming majority of students (96%) graduate without debt. If one considers Arrupe College an experiment with lofty ambitions, it seems to be working, and other universities across the country are replicating the model.
“In many ways, people have spoken about Arrupe like a start-up,” says Minerva Ahumada, a clinical professor in philosophy who has been teaching at the college since it opened its doors. “The first four years were a lot of work, and sometimes it felt like we weren’t sure what the end game was. But then our first class graduated, and many of those students graduated from college within a four-year time span. You start seeing that this model is helping students accrue little to no debt in their first two years, feel academically prepared, and be successful. That first commencement was a huge sense of validation.”
We want our students to see that a university education isn’t just for financial advancement but for the service of communities.
— Father Martin Connell, S.J., dean of Arrupe College
Historically, community colleges have served as an important entry point for low-income students seeking to further their education, and they continue to play an important role in upward mobility. However, community colleges often have limited funding to adequately support a large student population with significant financial, academic, and social barriers.
Paul Tough, author of The Inequality Machine: How College Divides Us, explains that low-income students are frequently only a small setback away from abandoning their studies. “Many do not have any kind of safety net,” he says. “What happens very often at places other than Arrupe is that when a low-income student gets to college and something goes wrong—a family member gets sick, their car breaks down—they are forced to drop out or take time off.” Thus, even the best community colleges tend to have low success rates. According to All4Ed, a national nonprofit group that advocates for equitable education, only 34% of community college students graduate with an associate degree within three years. At Arrupe, 53% of students do so.
Over the past decade, Arrupe has expanded its offerings to better nurture students’ aspirations. In 2018, the college launched a pre-STEM track within its liberal arts program. Cooke chose that track, taking a class in health care philosophy led by clinical associate professor Giancarlo Tarantino that convinced him to commit himself to a medical career. “The class was discussion based, focused on the ethics of working with patients and family members,” says Cooke. “Hearing those scenarios made me pursue medicine with full confidence that I can be a doctor who makes comfort a priority for everyone I treat.”
The college also added two dual-enrollment programs—bilingual and bicultural education and nursing—which each offer structured pathways to a bachelor’s degree. The number of paid internships for students has also continued to grow, and Career Services recently launched the Arrupe Career Fellowship, an eight-week paid program that allows students to explore professional paths in different companies and organizations. Arrupe has also expanded its services to meet the food and housing needs of students. “We recognized the role food insecurity plays in frustrating learning,” says Father Martin Connell, S.J., dean of Arrupe College. To address the issue, there is now a food pantry on Loyola’s Water Tower Campus, where Arrupe is housed, that provides fresh produce and shelf-stable items to any student.
“Likewise, we have students who face housing insecurity. Before taking the job, I sat in on a meeting where the presenters talked about students who were couch surfing because they didn’t have a home to stay in,” he adds. Today, students who are experiencing housing insecurity or whose academic success would benefit greatly from living on campus can apply for one of 36 scholarships for a room in Baumhart Hall. If accepted, they can live in the residence at no cost and also receive Rambler Bucks to use at a nearby restaurant, do their laundry, or purchase cleaning supplies.
Such accommodations can determine whether a student even enrolls in college at all, let alone earns a degree. “‘I did not think I was going to be a successful student if I did not have housing,” says Cooke, whose parents left him on his own while in high school. His options were to seek shelter in unstable, toxic environments or find housing assistance. “I wanted to be around good influences while attending college. I didn’t want to go and then not have anywhere to live. In order for me to put my academics first, moving out was the first step.”
While Arrupe has expanded access to higher education for first-generation students, kept their debt low or nonexistent at graduation, and achieved retention and completion rates above the national average, it continues to pursue improvements to further strengthen retention and completion. “We see more neurodivergent students,” says Jennifer Armstrong, clinical associate professor in communication. “We want programming that helps us know how we can best teach them. We understand that it’s important for us to be able to provide some of the basic elements that maybe some students miss.”
Dean Connell, for his part, hopes to develop a stronger relationship between Arrupe and the City of Chicago, especially regarding civic leadership and community outreach. “When I ask students what their number-one concern is beyond a personal issue, they talk about gun violence. We want to help them figure out what contributions they can make to that dialogue and act to make Chicago a safer place.” Further, he says, “We want our students to see that a university education isn’t just for financial advancement but for the service of communities.”
The future of Arrupe is also tied, in many ways, to the future of higher education in the United States. According to U.S. News and World Report data, the average annual tuition for an in-state public college is $11,011; for a private four-year college, it’s a whopping $43,505. And in an online survey of parents of current college students, conducted by the student loan provider College Ave, only 44% reported that they were ready to foot the first tuition bill.
The story of Arrupe, however, flies in the face of such data. At a time when student debt is at an all-time high, upward mobility seems further out of reach, and there is increasing skepticism among the public about the value of a college education, Arrupe’s low-cost, wraparound services model demonstrates a path forward.
After his tenure as dean, Father Katsouros founded the Come to Believe Foundation in 2020 to help other institutions replicate it. To date, Boston College, Butler University, Fairfield University, and the University of Mount Saint Vincent have implemented similar two-year programs.
Whether Arrupe’s example continues to proliferate is impossible to predict. However, when it comes to the impact the college has had on its students, the results are nothing short of transformative. “Arrupe allowed me to branch out and see myself in a better light and to see and touch the different achievements that I didn’t see myself touching,” says Cooke. “I thank Arrupe every day for investing in me when I first got there because I didn’t see this for myself. But they did.”
