So on Tuesday, Mays plans to show up at the grand opening of Graduate! Philadelphia, a center in the Gallery for adult college dropouts who, like him, want to go back to school. Mayor Nutter is expected to show up as well.

"I'm real excited," Mays said.

When Mays read about the Graduate! Philadelphia center in a newspaper, he arrived at the Gallery looking for help even as boxes were being unpacked and computers plugged in.

"When I left," he said, "I felt like the dead end was gone, and I could see a path in front of me. Now I have the fire and the desire" to return to college.

Graduate! Philadelphia is a culmination of three years of work and research by its director, Hadass Sheffer; the Philadelphia Workforce Investment Board, headed by Sallie Glickman; and the Pennsylvania Economy League, then headed by Thornburgh. The Knight Foundation and the city have contributed $750,000, and the Workforce Investment Board provides many administrative services.

Graduate! Philadelphia's approach is different from other college initiatives, which focus on plugging brain drain - trying to raise the number of city graduates by keeping the 300,000 college students enrolled here from leaving Philadelphia after they earned their diplomas.

Glickman and Thornburgh took their inspiration from a depressing U.S. Census statistic - 88,000 college dropouts ages 25 to 64 live in the city.

There would be no brain drain to plug if Glickman and Thornburgh could get some of the dropouts back to school, they realized.

These people were not leaving. They were already home.

Nor was Graduate! Philadelphia starting from scratch. These people wanted to go to college.

So Thornburgh and Glickman hired Sheffer, who had made a career in adult education, to figure out why students left college and how to get them back.

Mays is a case study.

No one in his family had ever gone to college. His mother died when he was 10. "I just ran on the streets," Mays said. "I came up in the projects, and I was stuck there."

He dropped out of high school, but earned his GED in 1980, taking classes at Philadelphia Community College.

He loved the college atmosphere and enrolled. "When I went to college, my horizons started broadening."

He loved the new ideas, the new people, and the camaraderie of his classmates, but he was not used to studying. A housing crisis forced him to quit. A series of low-end jobs to support himself and his children followed.

"Days," he said, "turned into months. Months turned into years. You feel like you are running in place."

Sheffer said it was not easy for people like Mays to return. The application and financial-aid process is geared to 18-year-olds marching in lockstep from high school. College offices keep hours during the day - inconvenient for working adults.

Graduate! Philadelphia partners with nine area colleges that have agreed to set up special hours, to dedicate special counselors, and to evaluate past course credits and life experience.