In the context of a tight labor market with more jobs than workers to fill openings, and as young people increasingly seek alternatives to college, apprenticeships have become more important than ever. While the "earn and learn" model of apprenticeship seems to be the obvious choice to address labor market needs, it remains underutilized…

Child care plays a vital role in our nation's economy. COVID-19 has largely shut down child care programs and schools across the nation, presenting challenges for working parents. Child care closures are a particularly acute problem for frontline and essential workers--health care personnel, grocery store staff, postal and delivery service…

Experts from the RAND Corporation prepared this independent report on New Jersey's Tuition Aid Grant (TAG) program for low-income college students. TAG is the nation's most generous state-funded financial aid program on a per-resident-undergraduate basis. Currently, TAG distributes around $475 million in grants per year, and an award covers about…

Like many states across the nation, California is facing persistent teacher shortages. School districts continue to find it difficult to fill vacancies with fully credentialed teachers, especially math, science, special education, and bilingual education teachers. Teacher shortages impact student learning as districts resort to relying on a…

The state of Michigan has set a goal to increase the percentage of residents with a postsecondary degree or credential to 60 percent by 2030. Achieving that goal will require a concerted, strategic, and multipronged effort. Today, less than 50 percent of residents have attained a postsecondary degree or credential. While making college more…

State need-based financial aid programs are a key driver of college access and completion for lower-income students and racially marginalized students in California, most of whom attend public two- and four-year colleges and universities and come from families with annual incomes of less than $40,000. As the state's largest need-based financial…

This Policy Snapshot explores need-based financial aid programs across the country and highlights state program examples, grant and scholarship expenditure amounts, and recent legislative activity.

This report documents the results to date of reforms underway from the State University of New York (SUNY) Strong Start to Finish, one of the six systems that make up the first phase of the Strong Start to Finish initiative, an initiative of Education Commission of the States. SUNY is using its Strong Start to Finish resources to support…

The Assessing Tuition- and Debt-Free Higher Education Task Force was convened in July 2016. Charged by the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators's (NASFAA's) Board of Directors with evaluating the existing landscape of state and local promise programs with a focus on scaling such models to the national level, the task force…

Ohio provides need-based aid through a program called the Ohio College Opportunity Grant (OCOG), which is essential to helping students from low-income backgrounds attend college. Unfortunately, OCOG excludes over 110,000 community college and regional campus students, who are more likely to come from low-income families. Because of OCOG policy,…

In April 2017, the New York State Legislature approved Governor Andrew Cuomo's proposal to establish the Excelsior Scholarship program, which the governor described as the nation's first offer of "tuition-free" two- and four-year college to the middle-class. Excelsior Scholarships promised to eliminate tuition charged by the State…

As schools of choice, charter schools typically have the flexibility to enroll students from across an area, rather than being bound to a neighborhood attendance zone. And as schools usually created from scratch, charters can build diversity into their design, choosing educational models designed to appeal to a wide range of families. In practice,…

There is a widening college access gap in the United States. The ever-rising cost of higher education, coupled with diminished government financial support and growing income inequality, have put college out of reach for many at a critical juncture when postsecondary education is essential for enhancing career prospects. The situation has been…

Are statewide college Promise programs an effective way to increase college access and success? It's hard to say. While these programs are becoming more common, they vary widely along a number of dimensions. RFA's new "Statewide College Promise Framework" is a tool that can be used to capture and compare important variation in the…

Launched in 2017, New York's Excelsior Scholarship makes the state's public colleges tuition-free for low- and middle-income state residents who meet several conditions. The program, championed by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, is billed as a middle-class program that aims to make City University of New York (CUNY) and State University of New…