FILE - The Oregon Promise Grant's impact on high school graduate enrollment rates has been muted. Pennants from colleges and universities across the country adorn the office of a Benson High School counselor's office on February 2, 2024.
Tiffany Camhi / OPB
State higher education officials are taking a serious look at whether it’s time to end a student aid program that’s consistently failed to boost Oregon’s college-going rates, help student retention and close equity gaps.
An early draft of a Higher Education Coordination Commission legislative policy proposal recommends ending the Oregon Promise Grant next year and transferring its funds to its much larger sister program, the Oregon Opportunity Grant.
The Oregon Promise Grant covers the cost of tuition at any of the state’s 17 community colleges for eligible, recent high school graduates. Unlike the Opportunity Grant, the Promise program is not need-based.
Oregon was among the pioneering states in the U.S. to establish a free community college-for-all program. Now there are more than 200 “promise” programs operating throughout the country, according to estimates from the employment research nonprofit W.E. UpJohn Institute.
HECC’s preliminary move to discontinue the program will surely reignite a yearslong debate over whether Oregon Promise is achieving what it set out to do when lawmakers created it more than a decade ago: attract more Oregon high school graduates into the state’s higher education system.
The grant’s primary mechanism to draw in more students is its guarantee to make college more affordable. The student aid program’s name derives from its “promise” to pay the full cost of tuition at the state’s community colleges.
“For many students in the program, it is increasing affordability,” said HECC’s Director of Legislative and Policy Affairs Kyle Thomas, noting one of the program’s bright spots.
The agency’s 2025 report on the program highlights that 52% of all Oregon Promise recipients in the preceding school year would not have been able to cover the cost of attendance without the grant. The minimum award that year was just over $2,000.
And when it first launched in 2016, colleges saw a 2% bump in enrollment from the prior year.
But since then, the grant’s impact has been muted. In fact, high school graduates are enrolling at Oregon community colleges at rates below what colleges were seeing before the Promise grant started.
“When it comes to increasing enrollment, increasing retention, increasing completion, we’re not seeing, in our own data, that the program is having that effect,” said Thomas.
The report found that students receiving funds from the grant were already likely to go to college, largely because of its eligibility requirements. This means the program is failing to open doors to high school graduates reluctant to pursue a postsecondary education.
Perhaps another troubling data point: most of the grant’s money, 70%, is going toward students with the least amount of need for financial aid.
That’s due to the program’s “last-dollar” design. It only kicks in after other sources of need-based student aid are applied to the cost of tuition, such as a federal Pell Grant and Oregon Opportunity Grant. That’s resulted in fewer low-income Oregonians benefiting from the Promise grant.
FILE - A flyer informing Benson Polytechnic High School seniors about the Free Application for Federal Student Aid and the Oregon Student Aid Application on April 17, 2024.
Tiffany Camhi / OPB
Thomas said HECC staff have been considering making big changes to the grant for years.
“There’s been a tension in the legislature between wanting to have a free community college access program that reaches into the middle class and wanting a program that captures more students,” he said.
Thomas said those are “laudable goals” but require a lot more money to work. And simply adding more funding to the program to reach more students would have “the effect of turning the Promise grant into something that looks more like the Opportunity grant.”
The Oregon Opportunity Grant is the state’s largest needs-based financial aid program, with $329 million in state funding for the current two-year budget cycle. A recent state report shows that this program is encouraging more students to attend college while also reaching underrepresented student groups.
HECC staff’s proposal recommends moving the Promise grant’s $40 million into the Oregon Opportunity Grant in the next biennium. It’s a move that they think will benefit more students and allow for larger financial aid awards for students who need it the most.
No changes can be made to the program without the approval of state lawmakers.
HECC commissioners reviewed the initial proposal and heard testimony from university and community college representatives on the idea this week.
“I do think that this proposal might align our state dollars a little bit more clearly with the goal of getting funding to students with the greatest financial need,” said Nathan Icenhower, the financial aid director at Bushnell University, a private institution based in Eugene.
“It simplifies the process for students as they pursue various financial aid options, and it makes the transition from a two-year program into a four-year degree a little bit smoother,” Icenhower told a HECC subcommittee this week.
Financial aid representatives from some community colleges were less enthusiastic but said they would support changes that increase student retention and completion.
Concerns over losing state funding were top of mind.
“We understand that the program has not fully met expectations,” said Breana Sylwester, who leads Central Oregon Community College’s financial aid office.
“However, as conversations move toward potential elimination or restructuring, we want to strongly emphasize that any reallocation of funding should remain with the community college sector,” she said.
