Image: Denisa Gándara (PhD 2016) and co-author Amy Li investigate Promise programs in an paper published in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. Their article, “Promise for Whom? ‘Free-College’ Programs and Enrollments by Race and Gender Classifications at Public, 2-Year Colleges” tracks the effectiveness of 33 different programs on first-time college students by race/ethnicity and gender. They define Promise programs broadly as effort to “award financial aid to students based on their geographic location” regardless of those programs’ eligibility criteria or disbursement methods for aid. They write, “By examining multiple programs simultaneously, we explore how different design characteristics relate to effects across various demographic groups.” Pulling data from IPEDS, they focus on institutional-level enrollment changes before and after program implementation, rather than impact on participating students. Their findings show that Promise programs relate positively to increases in enrollments of most demographic groups with the greatest increases among Black and Hispanic students. The design characteristics had impact on which groups the program reached. Read the article at: https://doi.org/10.3102/0162373720962472 Type of News/Audience: Alumni
