A new report on college promise programs shows their merits are fairly nuanced. And, a look at how some colleges are changing to comply with DEI bans.

Earlier this year, our partner WUNC in North Carolina wrote about the complicated effects of the state’s promise program. That is, the initiative where in-state students pay just $500 per semester at four participating UNC system schools, with those schools receiving millions in supplemental funding from the state to cover the loss in tuition revenue.

While touted as a way for students to access higher ed affordably and boost in-state enrollment, system officials said the program is harmful.

“The introduction of the four Promise schools have hurt us,” Brianna Atkinson reported UNC Greensboro Chancellor Franklin Gilliam saying. For UNC schools which do not participate in the NC Promise program, decreased tuition revenue has led to cutbacks. 

A new working paper from the Annenberg Institute at Brown University expands on this: while promise programs – sometimes called “free college” – are commonly described as success stories for the states and students they serve, there’s not much data to support their tangible effects on student debt, college completion and academic performance, among other socioeconomic factors.

“Indeed, “free college” is better conceptualized as a marketing term than a policy category,” wrote author David B. Monaghan. 

Promise programs work, generally, by providing a tuition guarantee to students, meaning students are assured they will not pay more than a set amount. In some programs that number is zero, but it really varies widely and the mechanics of each program can look completely different from one place to the next. We’ve already mentioned NC Promise; PublicSource last fall covered Pittsburgh Promise, a last-dollar scholarship program which covered students’ eligible expenses after they received all other scholarships and grants. 

Monaghan said while previous research suggests these programs have many different kinds of impacts, one that was particularly interesting to him was the notion that they provide new information for students to use in their college decision-making process, something schools refer to as “messaging effects.”

Publicizing a promise program can spur enrollment because it’s attractive to prospective students who want to understand exactly how much tuition will cost them at a given school. We’ve seen the chaos wrought by this year’s FAFSA rollout, and without a clear sticker price, many students are opting to forego college or wait until they have more information. 

Monaghan argues it’s inaccurate to say these programs provide families with information, they just make the confusion of college pricing irrelevant.

“It isn’t that people have too little or incorrect information and that programs provide additional facts or clarification. (Promise) Programs intervene to alter students’ and families’ conceptions of likely college costs,” he wrote.

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Elsewhere on Open Campus

In Mississippi: Molly Minta detailed how universities across the state are making changes to their diversity, equity and inclusion offices, potentially in an effort to ward off a legislative ban.

In El Paso: Emails show leaders of a National Science Foundation-funded project felt threatened by university oversight of their work, Danny Perez reported.

In Cleveland: Amy Morona wrote about an interesting pilot program at Lorain County Community College, which connects humanities students with hands-on experiences.

“If you have a passion for these humanities fields, that doesn’t mean you’re not getting job training. It just means you might have to do a little more work to connect the dots between what you’re learning in the classroom and what you can do on the job,” said the school’s arts and humanities dean.

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