The means 'to see a different future'

Besides the baby, they have a 5-year-old and a 3-year-old. Davila scarfs down some Raisin Bran or a soy shake and rushes to work as a manager at FranklinCovey, a business products and consulting company.

About 5 p.m., Davila gets off work, grabs a burger from McDonald's and battles the traffic from North Star Mall to the South Side, where he takes a full load of classes at San Antonio's Texas A&M University-Kingsville System Center.

When he finally pulls into his driveway about 10 p.m., the kids are already tucked into bed. Within hours, the sun has sneaked up behind him again, and the cycle repeats.

This weekend made it worth all the work.

On Sunday, Davila was among 200 graduates to walk the stage at Municipal Auditorium and receive his bachelor's degree from the seed campus for the future Texas A&M-San Antonio. In another boost for grads, last week Texas lawmakers passed a bill that would unlock $40 million in tuition revenue bonds to build a permanent campus and let the new university declare its independence from the Kingsville campus.

“If I look back 10 years ago, I would never imagine my life to be where I am right now,” said Davila, who is student body president. “My education has really put me in a different place. It has allowed me to see a different future.”

Though many have dismissed lawmakers' efforts to build a new university on the South Side as pork barrel politics, Davila said the campus is opening doors for underserved students.

Since 2000, the system center has turned out 1,770 graduates, a good number of them working parents such as Davila. Of the 1,648 students enrolled, two-thirds are Hispanic and 70 percent are women. Nearly half receive Pell grants, which means they are low-income.

The campus offers only upper-division courses; most students start out at one of five Alamo Colleges, mostly Palo Alto College just down the road.