Oregon May End Tuition-Free Community College Aid Program

Oregon May End Tuition-Free Community College Aid Program

The number of students using the program is actually going down.

Oregon Public Broadcasting reports:

Oregon’s tuition-free community college aid program could be on its last legs

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.

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