(The Center Square) – In 1990, Dan Apple was more than halfway through his undergraduate education at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro when he decided to leave school for the workforce.

“I mistakenly thought that I knew everything and would be fine without finishing college,” Apple told The Center Square. “It didn’t take long to figure out that it wasn’t true. But by that time, I’ve had a wife, I had a kid, responsibilities. House payments.”

Apple, co-valedictorian of his high school class, did well in the business world without a degree, working first as a dispatcher for a trucking company and later owning a freight brokerage company. More recently, he has worked as a project manager for a precast concrete company.

As he grew older, Apple began to wish that he had finished college.

“Many of the people I deal with are engineers,” he said. “There are people with master’s in business administration degrees. There are lawyers. There is just a myriad of higher education that I am dealing with every day.”

He is not alone. There are an estimated 1 million North Carolinians who left college before earning their degree, according to the National Student Clearinghouse.

The University of North Carolina System is working with a company, ReUp Education, to help students like Apple return to college even decades after they left. Ten universities in the UNC System are participating, including UNC Greensboro, where Apple has reenrolled thanks to guidance from the program.

He expects to earn his degree by the end of this year at the age of 55.

“I sent in a request for information and within minutes I got an e-mail and we set up a time for a phone call,” Apple said. “It was a super easy process to get started. All my questions were answered immediately.”

His first class was a summer course in U.S. History. It was a lot different than the college classes he remembered.

“The world changed from 1990 to 2024,” he said. “There was no such thing as a laptop computer when I quit college. Now we are doing everything online.”

This time around, Apple has taken his college classes much more seriously than he did in the first round.

“I am a much better student than I ever was,” Apple said.

Shun Robertson, the system’s senior vice president for Policy and Strategy told the Center Square University System President Peter Hans has a “keen interest” in adult learners.

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Since 2023, more than 600 North Carolina students have earned their degrees through the Reup program, Robertson said. The Legislature has funded financial aid options for the returning students as well.

“These are students who have already invested in their education but had to pause before completing their degree,” Robertson said. “ReUp gives us a proactive way to say, ‘We haven’t forgotten about you. We are going to help you finish what you started.”