Background/Context: The subject of this study concerns the Michigan College Access Network (MCAN), a college access program that has operated in Michigan since 2010 to promote postsecondary access and equity statewide. The state of Michigan has trailed nationally in educational quality and attainment for the past several decades, ranking 38th in…

Are state universities and state scholarship programs perpetuating income inequality in the United States? Using data from Florida on the number of students from each public high school in the state who attended a State University System (SUS) university and the number who received a Florida Bright Futures (FBF) scholarship, this paper attempts to…

Education is a fundamental right, yet access to tertiary education remains a challenge for marginalized communities worldwide. To address this, the Philippine government launched the Expanded Students' Grant-in-Aid Program for Poverty Alleviation (ESGP-PA) in 2013, offering free college education to impoverished but academically inclined students.…

Refugees have a significantly lower rate of higher education enrollment than the rest of the population, which can contribute to continued dependency on donors and can lower their chances of geographical and social mobility. This study sought to investigate the obstacles and facilitators which can support refugee enrollment and success throughout…

Promise programs are discussed as a policy movement that began with the 2005 launch of the Kalamazoo Promise. Since then, programs bearing the Promise label or sharing similar features have spread across the higher educational landscape, appearing in most states and across postsecondary sectors. Simultaneously, scholarly literature discussing…

This article presents an investigation carried out within the Regional Observatory Project for Quality and Equity in Latin America (ORACLE), an Erasmus + initiative financed by the European Union (with more than 35 Latin American Universities involved), conducted in 2018 and 2019 in the Institute of of Education (IE) at Universidad ORT Uruguay.…

Influencing student enrollment behavior is an ongoing process. Institutions continually try to predict student college choice while at the same time trying to influence that choice. This article describes the enrollment goals for the incoming freshman class at the University of Oregon, and how a limited institutional financial aid budget was used…

Given the proliferation of college promise programs and the increasing popularity of last-dollar designs, we explore changes to states' financial aid resource environments following the adoption of two of the largest and longest-operating state programs: Tennessee Promise and Oregon Promise. We leverage descriptive tools and a causal-inference…

A growing volume of research shows college promise programs increase the likelihood that students enroll in and complete college. Place-based promise programs provide a guaranteed college scholarship for students who attend a specified school district. We examine the societal benefits and costs of a place-based scholarship program in rural…

This article draws on ethnographic data on the distribution of scholarship programs at two Nepali state-run schools. Anchored in the cross-field of educational anthropology and the anthropology of bureaucracy, this article examines schools not just as sites of learning but as institutions that control and regulate access through bureaucratized…

This article provides an overview of community colleges as an access point to higher education, specifically for individuals without a high school diploma. The article highlights how one community college system is addressing both postsecondary access and workforce demands through policy and practice change. The Louisiana Community and Technical…

This qualitative study examines Tennessee Promise students' (N = 60) perceptions of supports and resources during their first year of college. Students' reflections suggest that they hold expectations for support from the state beyond scholarship dollars, and that other actors, including faculty, staff, parents, and the state's nonprofit partner,…

Researchers have considered how school choice policies affect student achievement, but less inquiry explores how the organization of schools may change in the presence of choice. This descriptive and exploratory paper analyzes a state representative sample of school mission statements at two time points: before the enactment of choice policies in…

Research for Action has studied statewide Promise programs since 2017, with in-depth analysis in four states--Delaware, Nevada, Oregon, and Tennessee. Our research in these states includes an extensive review of legislative and policy documents; 146 interviews with policymakers, institutional leaders, and high school staff; site visits to 8…

This study examined the initial impact of the 2021 amendment to the Student Excellence Equals Degree (SEED) legislation on adult student program recipients at Delaware Technical Community College (Delaware Tech) in the state of Delaware. Additionally, the study explored the characteristics of adult student program recipients. The researcher used a…