Splash NewsTom Hanks, a self-proclaimed former "underachieving student with lousy SAT scores," says he is the person he is today because of the time he spent at a community college and has voiced his support for President Barack Obama's proposal for free tuition for qualifying prospective students of such schools.
The 58-year-old star Oscar-winning actor, who later attended a university and dropped out to concentrate on acting, made his comments in an op-ed, titled "I Owe It All to Community College," that was published in The New York Times on Wednesday.
"In 1974, I graduated from Skyline High School in Oakland, California, an underachieving student with lousy SAT scores," Hanks wrote in his op-ed. "Allowed to send my results to three colleges, I chose M.I.T. and Villanova, knowing such fine schools would never accept a student like me but hoping they'd toss some car stickers my way for taking a shot. I couldn't afford tuition for college anyway."
Six days ago, Obama, who Hanks supported in the 2008 and 2012 elections, announced that he wants to make two years of community college "free for everybody's who is willing to work for it."
Many students who complete associate degrees at a two-year community college, also called junior college, go on to transfer to a four-year, much pricier university to try to obtain their bachelor's degree, a requirement for most white collar jobs.
Hanks, whose profession as an actor does not require any higher education degree, attended Chabot College, a community college, in Hayward, California, near San Francisco, for two years and based the 2011 film Larry Crowne on his experience. In the film, he plays a middle-aged man who enrolls in community college after losing his job.
"I drove past the campus a few years ago with one of my kids and summed up my two years there this way: 'That place made me what I am today," Hanks, parent to sons Colin Hanks, Chet Hanks and Truman Hanks and daughter Elizabeth Hanks, wrote in The New York Times.
Hanks noted how his fellow students included Vietnam veterans, mothers and middle-aged men. He listed several community college courses he enjoyed and where he excelled, such as oral interpretation and public speaking, the latter of which came with the bonus of a "gorgeous" classmate, and classes he hated and almost failed, such as health, math-dominated astronomy and zoology, in which he accidentally killed his fruit flies. But it was theater that was his passion and at Chabot, he got to learn about famous plays and later attend actual productions of them.
"Those plays filled my head with expanded dreams," Hanks wrote. "I got an A."
In 1976, Hanks transferred to California State University, Sacramento, where he was a theater major. He dropped out of school after a year to take an internship at the Great Lakes Theater Festival in Cleveland.
He spent three years learning theater production and kick-started his acting career there, appearing in a production of Shakespeare's The Two Gentlemen of Verona. He won the Cleveland Critics Circle Award for Best Actor for his performance as Proteus, which marked one of the few times he has played a villain, according to the California Community College's Chancellor's Office, which lists Hanks as a "notable alumni" (it also notes he is related to Abraham Lincoln, through his mother).
In 1978, Hanks moved to New York to continue his theater career. Two years later, he made his big screen debut in the thriller He Knows You're Alone and starred on the show Bosom Buddies, before appearing in movies that made him more famous, such as Splash, Bachelor Party, Big, Turner & Hooch, A League of Our Own and Sleepless in Seattle and later, dramas such as Philadelphia and Forrest Gump, which won him two Oscars, Apollo 13, Saving Private Ryan, Cast Away, The Da Vinci Code, the Toy Story movies and Larry Crowne.
Last year, Hanks was among the stars honored at the Kennedy Center Honors, attended by the president and First Lady Michelle Obama.
The U.S. leader is set to talk about his community college proposal in his State of the Union address on Jan. 20. Opponents have balked at the idea, citing how the tuition for qualifying students would be paid by the federal and state governments. Such legislation would need to pass a vote in the Republican Party-dominated Congress.
"I'm guessing the new Congress will squawk at the $60 billion price tag, but I hope the idea sticks, because more veterans, from Iraq and Afghanistan this time, as well as another generation of mothers, single parents and workers who have been out of the job market, need lower obstacles between now and the next chapter of their lives," Hanks wrote in his op-ed. "High school graduates without the finances for a higher education can postpone taking on big loans and maybe luck into the class that will redefine their life's work. Many lives will be changed."