Promise Programs

Frequently Asked Questions

What’s working?

When higher education seems financially attainable and guidance is provided, students better understand how their actions affect their future, leading to better academic and behavioral outcomes. This is certainly the case in Kalamazoo, Michigan where the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research has extensively studied the Kalamazoo Promise. Their research has found that the guarantee of free college tuition has led to a significant decrease in high school suspensions and a dramatic increase in the GPAs of African American students, ranging from 0.17 to 0.60 standard deviations after controlling for “fixed effects.”

In addition to improved high school achievement, the impact on college enrollment and outcomes has also been largely positive for Kalamazoo students. Since the program started with the class of 2006, more than 90 percent of KPS graduates continued on to college, compared to the two-thirds of high school graduates who enroll in college nationwide. Today, 41 percent of Promise scholars from the class of 2006 hold a bachelor’s degree compared to 37 percent of all U.S. high school graduates between the ages of 25 to 29 -- a significant difference especially after taking into account the demographics of Kalamazoo.

The Tennessee Promise is the cornerstone of Governor Bill Haslam’s Drive to 55, which aims ensure Tennessee’s future workforce and economic development needs by having 55 percent of Tennesseans equipped with a college degree or certificate by the year 2025. It is off to a great start as the first Tennessee Promise cohort of 15,800 helped increase freshman enrollment at community colleges by 24.7% and 20% at Colleges of Applied Technology. Tennessee is currently the number one state in the nation for FAFSA completions – as it is a requirement for the Tennessee Promise – and accounted for 40% of all new financial aid submissions nationwide.

How do Promise Programs work?

There are two main Promise Program models. Last dollar Promise Programs are most common. They require applicants to complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and will pay the remaining college tuition balance after Pell Grant and state scholarship programs are applied. First dollar scholarships are much less common – due to cost – and cover college tuition and required fees before Federal and state grants. In communities with last dollar Promise Programs, lower income students can use Pell Grant and state grant funds to pay for textbooks, transportation, housing and other non-tuition expenses.

In virtually all instances, Promise Programs pay for tuition and fees at a local community college. However, there are some that allow scholars to attend any in-state public college and select private institutions too.

What are the elements of a successful Promise Program?

The most successful state and local Promise Programs share several common elements beyond simply making tuition free. Most of them,

1. Start information outreach early, when students are still in middle school, so the students and parents, especially lower income families, can understand that cost will not be an obstacle to college attendance,
2. Provide mentors who begin their tasks with high school students and continue through completion,
3. Require minimum but reasonable academic performance criteria,
4. Encourage students/parents to exhaust every existing grant program for higher education, including Pell Grants and those provided by various states,
5. Offer meaningful educational remediation for students whose deficiencies make handling college level work virtually impossible, whether those deficiencies be in English comprehension and usage or math,
6. Create higher but reasonable expectations of schools themselves, especially community colleges and training schools, with negative consequences if they fail to achieve.

How do you pay for them?

Since nothing is ever really free, many people ask us this question. States such as Tennessee and Oregon, which have made their community colleges tuition free, found the money for these programs by making it a priority in their state budgeting process. Any state could do the same. Over fifty communities have also made college tuition free by instituting “Promise Programs,” which offer, in effect, place-based college scholarships for their residents. Funds for these types of programs have come from a combination of private philanthropy and community commitments. Other innovative ideas include leveraging the purchasing power of local government agencies using the Community Link Foundation’s procurement model, tapping private investment funds through social impact bonds, or involving local employers to support associate degree programs that produce the skilled workers those employers need. While none of these sources depend on federal government revenue, many of them make maximum use of existing student aid programs such as Pell Grants to help fund their “promise.”

Are Promise Programs Partisan?

"The need for more affordable colleges isn't partisan, it is not even bipartisan, it is non-partisan... It is like the North Star being in the North," said Oregon State Senator Make Haas at CFCT’s Northwest Summit on College Affordability in 2015.

On the state level, Tennessee, which has a Republican governor and legislature, and Oregon, with a Democratic Governor and legislature, were the first to implement state-wide Promise Programs. Since then, red, blue, and purple states around the nation have enacted the policy with overwhelming bipartisan support. In 2019, Mitch Carmichael, the President of the West Virginia State Senate, gained unanimous support from the state’s Republican majority legislature to make colleges tuition free. Similarly, in the Democratic-controlled state of Connecticut, the leaders of the legislature’s Joint Higher Education Committee – State Representative Greg Haddad and State Senator Will Haskell – spearheaded the passage of legislation making their community colleges tuition free starting in the Fall of 2020.

Communities with Promise Programs are also politically diverse and include Tulsa, Oklahoma and El Dorado, Arkansas in the South, and former manufacturing centers – such as Detroit, Michigan, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Buffalo, New York – that are continuing to transition to knowledge-based industries.