EAST MACHIAS – To fulfill his dream of owning a trucking company, Ryan Harmon always knew he would need a license to drive an 18-wheeler and someone to co-sign a loan.

But until last year the Washington Academy senior didn’t realize he would need a college education too.

“I thought I’d do just as well without it,” said Harmon, who now plans to attend the University of Maine at Machias “to learn what else is involved with trying to run my own business.”

His turnabout came through participation in Jobs for Maine Graduates, an education organization created by the Legislature in 1993 to help stem the rate of school dropouts and improve their prospects of finding employment.

But 11 years after its inception, JMG no longer is seen as just a school-to-work program, Pete Thibodeau, chief executive officer, told the State Board of Education recently.

In fact, JMG is sending increasing numbers of graduates on to postsecondary education, up from 28 percent to 42 percent in the last five years, he said.

This is a real boon in a state where educators and legislators alike are seeking desperately to improve on the number of residents who hold four-year degrees.

While 87 percent of Maine high school freshmen graduate from high school, only 55 percent enroll in college the next fall, and only 23 percent of the state’s adults have bachelor’s degrees.

Based in Farmingdale, JMG serves more than 2,400 middle and high school students from 49 schools in 197 communities. Participants may be underperforming academically, caught up in family or social issues, or have a high absentee rate from a genuine disinterest in school life or low opinions of themselves and their future.

Through JMG, students explore career and educational opportunities while working on becoming competent in oral and written communication, managing time and personal finances, interacting effectively with others, practicing leadership and developing good work habits.

Modeled after a national program, JMG requires students to perform community service and to job-shadow at local businesses in addition to their classroom activities.

Each year, about 600 JMG seniors graduate with their class – a 95 percent success rate – “and make really solid transitions into adult roles,” Thibodeau said.

Washington Academy headmaster Judson McBrine once had to hound students to try some form of postsecondary education.

Now, even those who say they want to be truck drivers know their best bet is to go to community college first, “because they want to be the best-educated truck driver they can be,” he said.

Jean Gulliver, chair of the State Board of Education, said it’s no surprise that the program is propelling more students into college. “If you succeed in middle school, you’re more likely to succeed in high school, and more likely to go on” to postsecondary education, she said.

JMG touts the value of postsecondary education by continually asking high school students to update their career goals and to research the education, skill level and salary associated with a particular job they think they want.

They “begin to see if they are really serious about it,” said Lori McBrine, Judson’s sister-in-law and a JMG teacher at Washington Academy.

Students must maintain their attendance and grades and make sure their classes satisfy college admission requirements. “We’re constantly talking and talking about postsecondary education,” she said.

When students write essays about where they want to be in 10 years and that “they want to have a big house, a nice car, and all the luxuries they can list,” McBrine said she helps them understand that before they can buy those things, “they need the income.”

She also invites into the classroom people who realized they ought to have continued on to postsecondary education. Having someone tell students, “You know what, guys, this is where I floundered … I haven’t even been able to keep my books,” can be effective, she said.

JMG classes keep students involved and active. On one recent day they were happily moving about McBrine’s room as part of an activity to help them understand stereotyping and diversity.

The same homey atmosphere was evident a few miles away at Machias High School where JMG students gathered around a large table as teacher Jeff Chick showed them on the blackboard how “life is like a pepperoni pizza,” made up of various stages or “slices.”

“My objective is for them to understand that they’ll be working for 47 years if they go to work at 18 and that they’d better like what they do,” he said. “And I want them to understand that if you want to be successful at life, it starts right here in high school.”

JMG students who go on to college tend to stay, thanks in part to the one-year follow-up they receive through the program after graduation. Only 20 percent of JMG students drop out of college before their sophomore year, according to Thibodeau.

“All year long I’m telling my seniors, ‘Realize next year you’ll hear from me at least once a month, and that your employer or professor will hear from me,”‘ McBrine said.

Knowing that McBrine would be checking on her kept Lisa Cushing, 21, now a senior at the University of Maine at Machias, on the straight and narrow after she graduated from Washington Academy.

“I can’t let her down,” Cushing said she recalled thinking.

She joined JMG as a junior after she found herself “really troubled” and failing some classes.

Although her mother pushed her to keep up her grades, Cushing said she began caring about her schoolwork and thinking positively about the future only after “someone outside my family showed me they cared about what I did with my life and wanted me to succeed.”

In 1995, after schools began asking for a program for younger students, JMG created a new curriculum for seventh- and eighth-graders in several middle schools.

“We agreed with school leaders that if you can get to the student earlier, you make a bigger difference in citizenship and academics, and students can carry on themselves,” said Thibodeau. Most seventh- and eighth-graders who participate in the program no longer need JMG once they get to high school, he said.

With a per student cost of $1,200 each year, the program receives $2.9 million annually from federal, state, community, foundation and private sources.

If not for the program, Alison Norton, 18, “probably wouldn’t be in school and there’s probably a good chance I’d have dropped out or not cared enough to do well in class,” said the Washington Academy senior.

Norton joined JMG two years ago and thrived on the support of classmates and McBrine. “My confidence and self-esteem skyrocketed,” she said. Now she’s determined to help other JMG students.

“Quite a few kids don’t think they have the potential to move on and do something with their life,” she said. “I tell them they can do anything, that they shouldn’t listen to other people who say they’re not smart enough or that they don’t have enough money.”