According to the National Deaf Center (NDC) 22% of deaf people have completed a bachelor's degree or higher, which is 15.7% lower than the attainment rates of hearing students. This inequality highlights the barriers that deaf people face in pursuing higher education.

Deaf students, in comparison to hearing students, tend to be older, married, and first-generation students, which can introduce more complexities as they navigate through college. 

In a survey conducted through the Deaf Postsecondary Access and Inclusion Scale (DPAIS), deaf college students have given campus access/inclusivity a D grade. 

Jillian Cleo Havandijan,  a deaf resident of SLO who teaches ASL at an elementary school,  had to come a long way to achieve her position. 

“There wasn’t really a friendly deaf community, I felt lost,” said Jillian about her first day at Laguna Middle School. She had just moved to SLO, from Austin, where she attended Texas School for the Deaf. 

Coming from a large deaf community to a school where there were only two other deaf students and no interpreters available was shocking.  

Jillian and her parents had to look for a different school that could accommodate her basic needs. The nearest one, which she was able to attend after patiently waiting months for a spot, was 4 hours away from San Luis Obispo. 

“All the teachers were deaf, and I was able to get involved, I was so happy,” said Havandijan about California School of the Deaf, in Fremont. After graduating High School, Jillian went in pursuit of higher education, she attended Gallaudet University in Washington, DC for two years. 

When she came back to the central coast and tried to attend college locally, she encountered the same educational system that failed her several years earlier. 

  “It was absolutely awful, I needed to fight fight fight…Til his day a deaf person will come to me and I will say ‘Don’t go to that college,’” Jillian said.