State’s tuition scholarship program stands out nationally

Oklahoma’s Promise scholarship program is doing what it was designed to do — help students from families with limited income aspire to, prepare for and graduate from college.

That’s the conclusion of a new performance review of the program by the Southern Regional Education Board.

Students who earn the scholarship outperform their peers in every measure — from high school grade-point average to college graduation — and nearly 89 percent of graduates work in Oklahoma and contribute to the state’s economy, Cheryl Blanco said Wednesday in a report to the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education.

“These are important measures,” said Blanco, SREB vice president for postsecondary education. “This program does all of that, and that’s why I think it is a preeminent program among financial aid programs in the nation.”

The review shows one in three of all 2016-17 graduates who earned a bachelor’s degree or associate degree was an Oklahoma’s Promise recipient.

“That’s a tremendous contribution to the educational goals of this state,” Blanco said.

Strengths of the program include requiring students to take core curriculum that prepares them for college-level work. “Otherwise it’s a false promise,” Blanco said.

Requiring students to enroll in the program when they are in grades 8-10 also is important because it gets them focused on college at a key time in life, she said. Only two other statewide programs reach out to students in middle school, she said — Indiana and Washington.

“Students who can see themselves as being successful are,” said Stephen Pruitt, SREB president. “Building aspirations from middle school up provides these students with a version of themselves that they might not have seen otherwise.”

More than 80,000 Oklahoma students have received the tuition scholarship since the program began in 1992.

While the numbers of students enrolling have been decreasing in recent years, the percentage of those who completed the requirements to earn the scholarship increased from 71 percent in 2017 to 73 percent in 2018.

About 8,300 students enrolled in 2017 and 8,100 this year, said Bryce Fair, the state higher education system’s associate vice chancellor for state grants and scholarships.

The number likely will drop to 8,000 next year, before it is expected to begin climbing in 2020 because of changes in the family income level requirements, Fair said.

Last year, the Legislature increased the income limit for enrolling in the Oklahoma’s Promise program for the first time since 2000, when it was set at $50,000.

The new family income limit for students applying in 2017-18 is $55,000, and a second increase — to $60,000 — will apply beginning in 2021-22.