Businessman offers to pay college tuition for every senior at this Wisconsin high school

(Image credit: iStock)

published 7 September 2018

It was not your ordinary first day of school for seniors at Luck High School in Wisconsin.

At an assembly on Tuesday, Principal Brad Werner told the 34 members of the Class of 2019 that Dennis Frandsen, a local businessman and banker, offered to pay for every graduating senior who decides to attend a two-year technical college. The scholarship will cover books and tuition. "It was a fun experience for me to share this experience with the seniors and watch their faces and their eyeballs get big," Werner told CNN.

Werner said he was shocked when Frandsen, who was born and raised in Luck, made the pledge to him out of the blue last month. He told Werner he wanted to help send teens to technical colleges because there are many job opportunities for skilled laborers like electricians and plumbers, and there aren't as many scholarships for students not attending four-year colleges. "He said he's fine with it being one student or all students," Werner said. "If they all take advantage of it, that's fine, too."

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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