College scholarships have long played an important role in ensuring access to post-secondary education in the U.S. However, we are now as a nation increasingly recognizing the imperative of focusing on post-secondary persistence and completion as well. An example of why this shift in focus has come about can be seen in data from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board which tracked the cohort of students who were 9th graders in 1997. Of those 250,000 students, thirty percent enrolled in post-secondary education and did not complete a credential within six years compared to twenty-nine percent who did not graduate from high school. In absolute terms, seventy-five thousand students who graduated high school and enrolled in college left empty-handed. In response to this issue, Greater Texas Foundation (GTF) engaged FSG Social Impact Advisors to examine how scholarship funders, including GTF, could design their programs to improve post-secondary persistence and completion, in addition to improving access. Forward-looking scholarship funders have an opportunity to structure and target their post-secondary scholarships so that they enable student success.
Full reports are listed below:
Dollars for Degrees: Structuring post-secondary scholarships to increase student success
Dollars for Degrees: Financial aid and its impact on post-secondary degree completion in Texas
