College Promise Programs

Through a comprehensive and multi-faceted program of research, Professor Laura Perna and her research team are advancing knowledge of “college promise” initiatives, programs that provide funding for low-income students to attend college. With a central goal of raising educational attainment in the United States, these programs “promise” a financial aid award to eligible students who live or attend school in a particular place. Professor Perna’s team has expanded research-based knowledge on this emerging approach for boosting higher education attainment. Program leaders and policymakers can tap into this knowledge to help shape program design, implementation, and evaluation.

The 2025 report, College Promise Programs in the Midwest: Insights for Higher Education Leaders, offers a close look at programs in twelve midwestern states – programs that are emblematic of the variety of promise initiatives nationwide. The research sheds new light on program design, sustainability, and long-term student outcomes, offering critical insights for policymakers, educators, and funders working to improve higher education access and attainment.

Professor Perna has studied and written about many facets of the free-college movement, including: how best to structure college promise programs to promote college success among underrepresented groups; how program design affects equity and efficiency; and the forces that affect how college promise programs are designed and implemented.

With Elaine Leigh, Professor Perna developed a typology of college promise programs that details important differences among programs and provides a foundation for future research.

Drawing on case study data, Elaine Leigh and Jeremy Wright-Kim offer a framework for considering the implications of free community college programs for equity and efficiency and for understanding the forces that influence the characteristics of implemented programs.