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.
At Graduate! Philadelphia, Kimberly Stephens, director of higher-education partnerships, helped Mays with his application and financial-aid forms.
Once Mays starts back at Community College, Stephens will stay in touch to help him through any rough patches.
But she is betting on him.
"People who drop out and return to school after having gone through life, they tend to make it," she said. "They see they really need that opportunity, and they want to open those doors."
Sheffer said Graduate! Philadelphia wanted to influence employers to pay up-front for tuition.
For example, the University of Pennsylvania Health System foots the bill - before the class begins - for any course an employee takes that leads to a degree, Wasserman-Riley said.
Glickman said she felt a sense of urgency about the program: "Our issue isn't a shortage of labor or a shortage of jobs," she said. "What we have is a fundamental mismatch. At some point, we're going to get to a critical juncture.
"The employers will either get the human capital they need or they'll leave. If we don't have the people to fill these jobs, if we don't get this right, we're going to lose these jobs for good."
