Tri-County to Clemson: A Promise Kept for First-Generation College Students

Seth Riddley/Special to Anderson Observer

College affordability is something people talk about constantly. Politicians campaign on it. Parents lie awake at night worrying about it. Families try to plan for it, even when the math never quite works. But real solutions, especially for students whose parents never went to college themselves, have always been hard to come by.

A new partnership between Tri-County Technical College and Clemson University is trying to change that. The TCTC Dual Enrollment Academy will give high school students in Anderson, Oconee, and Pickens counties a direct path to Clemson if neither of their parents completed a four-year degree.

The program launches in Spring 2026. Students will take college-level courses through Tri-County while still in high school, and those who meet the requirements will have guaranteed admission to Clemson after graduation. The program will begin with 25 students in its first year and is expected to expand to 150 students annually in future years.

I’m not involved in the program myself, but I just came across it and thought it was worth sharing because I was a first-generation college student too. My older brother got there first, and I still remember how disorienting it was to try to figure things out without a clear sense of how the process was supposed to work. That feeling doesn’t go away easily, and having an extra-detailed road map can make a big difference.

This new effort won’t fix everything, but it’s a concrete step. It focuses on the students who are least likely to make it to a place like Clemson, not because they lack the ability, but because no one around them has ever shown them how. These are students who’ve grown up in our area, many of them dreaming of attending Clemson one day. Now, for some of them, that dream will become reality. More details are available at tctc.edu/academy. If you know someone who could benefit, it’s worth passing along.