For Ty’Relle Stephens, making a beeline from high school to a bachelor’s program didn’t feel like the right choice, even though many people encouraged him to go straight to college.
“I didn’t think that I was ready for college at 18,” Stephens says.
Though he did eventually plan to pursue a bachelor’s degree, Stephens wanted to get work experience and gain clarity about his life goals first, and he also hoped to bolster his abilities in areas like project management and public speaking. So he pursued a business operations certificate through Year Up, a tuition-free job training program with multiple campuses across the U.S.
