Scholarship design: Who should be eligible?

The question of who is eligible for a Promise scholarship is one of the most critical decisions facing stakeholders at the design stage. Eligibility rules determine who benefits from such a program and affect a variety of other outcomes, such as potential changes in school culture or a state’s overall educational attainment rates.

Eligibility requirements should align with the program’s purpose. For example, If the goal is to increase college-going, especially among disadvantaged students, complex requirements should be avoided. Multiple requirements (such as high school GPA and attendance rates, community service, lengthy residency rules, and others) will reduce access; students can’t benefit if they don’t receive the funds, and this is especially true for the most disadvantaged. If the goal is to increase the supply of educated workers, include adults within eligibility requirements. Many adults, including those currently working, can benefit from the opportunity to retrain for a higher-paying job. For programs designed to reach adults, allowing part-time attendance and enlisting employers as partners are essential steps.

There also can be unintended consequences. For example, academic requirements such as high school GPA or attendance rates can disproportionately screen out lower-income students who have had more limited access to academic support. Long residency and enrollment requirements are most likely to affect lower-income families who may need to move in or out of a school district because of housing insecurity or job changes. Community service requirements will create new administrative burdens (and costs) for both students and program administrators.

Eligibility decisions cover several attributes.

Residency. The Promise programs covered in this handbook are designed to reach people who live in a particular geographic area, whether that is a state, a community, or a community college district. Thus, residency requirements are almost always a part of Promise programs. State-level Promise programs require beneficiaries to have attended high school or resided within the state, although residency length is generally short. Community college-based programs, similarly, usually require beneficiaries to reside within the relevant community college district. (California’s community college programs are an exception, as most provide tuition-free attendance to state residents without regard to the specific community in which they reside.)

Local Promise programs almost always have multiyear residency or school district enrollment requirements (often a minimum of two to four years). These programs may also have sliding scales that determine the level of benefits, with the greatest benefits going to those students with the longest tenure in the district. The rationale behind such rules is twofold. First, local Promise programs are often conceived of as economic development strategies designed to create long-term attachment between families and a city or school district; residency or enrollment requirements seek to create incentives for this attachment. (Research is mixed on whether they in fact do so.¹) Second, Promise programs can serve as catalysts for change in K-12 districts and communities (through, for example, enhanced tutoring or mentoring, or greater business engagement in internship or pathways programs), which may help engage all students and improve opportunity. Also, there is evidence that Promise programs can spark the creation of a college-going culture among high school students.² Students need to be attached to a school district or community to benefit from these changes.

There is a downside to lengthy residency or enrollment requirements when it comes to the equity impact of Promise programs. Low-income families may have higher mobility in and out of school districts, thereby reducing their children’s benefits.³ This is one reason why some communities have opted for shorter residency requirements (the Detroit Promise, for example, requires two years of city residency), while others have abandoned the sliding scale idea and now provide the same level of scholarship to all eligible students (for example, in 2018 the Pittsburgh Promise eliminated its sliding scale and established a four-year minimum residency prior to high school graduation). Housing-insecure students may also move in and out of the district, thereby losing eligibility. Some programs include unhoused or housing-insecure students in their eligibility based on school-district attendance.

Age of students. The Promise movement began by serving recent high school graduates, with many programs requiring that students begin their postsecondary education immediately after graduation. But most college students are not, in fact, recent high school graduates, and workforce-oriented Promise programs need to be able to reach adult workers. In recent years, the range of students reached by Promise programs has broadened, as some locales add companion programs to serve adults, and some states and community colleges launch Promise programs with no age restrictions.

Academic eligibility requirements. Some Promise programs include eligibility requirements that go beyond geographic location. The most typical among these are a minimum level of high school academic achievement (often a 2.0 or 2.5 GPA), high school attendance rates, or ACT/SAT scores. The rationale behind such requirements usually relates to the issue of college success—that is, students who fall below these academic benchmarks may struggle to succeed in a postsecondary setting. Such requirements also embody the idea that, with such an incentive on the table, students will work harder in high school.

The research is mixed on the effectiveness of program rules related to academic performance. Research suggests that high school GPAs are a reliable predictor of college success,⁴ so program stakeholders may turn to them to increase the likelihood that program beneficiaries will complete credentials or degrees. However, most Promise programs seek to expand the college-going pipeline to reach students not already on the postsecondary pathway, and high school GPA and attendance requirements can hinder this. A randomized trial of a Promise-like program in Milwaukee⁵ found that high school GPA requirements did not lead to higher grades in high school, and the main effect⁶ was to limit funds to only one in five students who were otherwise eligible. Since GPA is also correlated with race and income, such requirements can reduce program equity and effectiveness in increasing college-going. Moreover, such requirements are likely to limit the catalyzing effect on high schools’ college-going culture. Universal eligibility is more expensive, but also likely to do more to accomplish a variety of program goals.

Postsecondary performance requirements. Even after students meet the initial eligibility requirements, some programs have additional requirements students must fulfill to maintain eligibility once they have entered college. The most common of these performance requirements are taking a minimum number of credit courses per semester and maintaining a minimum college GPA (this is often congruent with colleges’ own requirements to remain in good academic standing). There is some research from other financial aid models that these types of incentives are more effective than high school–level merit requirements because they involve the possibility of taking away students’ current funding.⁷ In contrast, when academic merit requirements focus on high school, the receipt of college funding is often far in the future, limiting students’ incentives to change their behavior.

Financial need. A minority of Promise programs restrict benefits to students with demonstrable financial need (as measured, for example, by Pell Grant eligibility), although many other programs target such students indirectly by focusing their resources on high-poverty school districts or limiting benefits to the two-year public college sector that disproportionately serves low-income students. Merit requirements have the opposite effect and tend to distribute funds to those with less financial need. Some programs combine academic and financial need requirements, while others have imposed income ceilings to ensure that benefits do not go to the wealthy.

Other requirements. Some Promise programs have embedded community service requirements into their eligibility criteria. These create an added administrative burden both for students who need to find qualifying community-service opportunities and program administrators who must track and enforce the rules, although community-service requirements can make a program more attractive to local stakeholders by requiring students to “give back” to their community. A few states, most notably New York, have adopted “stay or pay” rules that require students to remain in the state for a given number of years after degree completion—if the student leaves, their grant aid becomes a loan. These provisions, too, impose high levels of administrative burden and complicate the “free college” message.

The history of social welfare policy in the United States suggests that universal programs enjoy stronger political support and popularity than those targeted toward the poor (think of the difference in public attitudes toward Social Security and SNAP, or Medicare and Medicaid). In the Promise field, polling data suggests that adding a GPA requirement⁸ increases public support while adding a financial need requirement reduces perceptions of fairness. Beyond perceptions, though, eligibility rules, along with other program criteria (see Questions 2 and 3), will profoundly affect who benefits from a Promise program.⁹ Eligibility requirements of all kinds also create administrative burdens¹⁰ that keep students from receiving funds even if they are eligible.

As with other social programs, simple rules around student eligibility¹¹ and low barriers to access¹² will maximize the reach of a Promise program, as research suggests.