Oregonians who graduated high school during the pandemic, but did not take advantage of free community college tuition under the Oregon Promise Scholarship, may get another chance to do so under a bill lawmakers are expected to consider during the 2024 legislative session.
Lawmakers meet for a maximum of just 35 days in February and March of 2024. With just over six weeks left until the start of the short session, Oregon politicians and higher education advocates are working to determine their key priorities.
Among the bills expected to be considered by lawmakers are a renewal of the Oregon Promise to COVID-Era Graduates, a push to collect more statewide data on student grades and a request for funding for free college materials such as online textbooks, said Sen. Michael Dembro. , D-Portland, Chairman of the Senate Education Committee. Dembro said lawmakers will also consider how to divide the Oregon Opportunity Grant between college and community college students, a process that has become a point of debate since the Legislature pumped more money into financial aid last session.
Overall, Oregon’s short session will focus on Gov. Tina Kotick’s housing priorities, homelessness and addressing Oregon’s addiction crisis, said Chairman Sen. Rob Wagner, D-Lake Oswego.
But “tight timelines rarely dampen lawmakers’ ambition,” says the legislative preview prepared by the Higher Education Coordinating Committee. Dembro has a host of higher education bills in the works, and the Oregon Community College Association outlined priorities it will also pursue on Thursday.
The Oregon Promise Scholarship covers community college tuition for eligible high school graduates, but only if they enroll directly after high school.
However, college enrollment rates declined for Oregon students who graduated in 2020 and 2021, when the pandemic forced college classes online and wreaked havoc on the traditional college experience.
Dembro said he would partner with Republicans on the Senate Education Committee to advance a bill that would temporarily restore Oregon Promise eligibility for students in those pandemic classes. The bill would open a new two-year window in which students in groups affected by the pandemic who did not enroll in college, or who enrolled but dropped out, could once again access the grant to pay for community college tuition.
“Many students chose not to go directly to college, largely because they didn’t want online learning, or it didn’t work for them, or out of concern about health conditions or the need to provide for their families.” Dembro said. “We want to give them the opportunity to have another chance.”
Dembro said his committee will also introduce a bill that would require school districts to submit more data on high school students’ grades to the Oregon Department of Education, which could bring Oregon one step closer to offering automatic admission of qualified high school students to public colleges and universities. Other states, including Idaho and Minnesota, offer some type of direct admissions process. One hurdle in Oregon is that there is no common reporting system for student grades, which colleges and universities would need to know in order to offer automatic admission, Dembro said. While the bill could solve the GPA collection problem, a direct admission payment likely wouldn’t follow until later, Dembro said.
Direct admissions can help increase college enrollment rates, but it will also help colleges cast their network to a broader range of students, Dembro said.
“Direct admissions is really attractive when it comes to connecting with students who may be first-generation, who didn’t necessarily consider themselves college material,” he said.
The bill would also likely call for more funding for the state’s open educational resources, including free online textbooks, and require the state to undergo a public process to determine how to distribute the Oregon Opportunity Grant, a need-based scholarship to Oregon colleges and universities. students. Oregon lawmakers allocated an additional $100 million to the grant last session, but they didn’t really discuss who would get that money, Dembro said. Higher Education Coordinating Commission staff decided to count grant awards to cover up to 75% of tuition costs for students at community colleges and universities. Previously, funds were calculated based on the total cost of attendance.
Community college advocates have sounded the alarm about the new distribution model, which allocates much higher awards to college students because of their higher tuition costs. For 2023-24, low-income community college students qualify for a maximum grant of $3,900, while college students can qualify for more than $7,500.
The Oregon Community College Association, which lobbies on behalf of 17 two-year schools in the state, said Thursday that adjusting the Opportunity Scholarship distribution model is one of its top priorities for the 2024 session.
This model “disadvantages community college students, whose living expenses such as housing and food often pose greater barriers to success than the costs of tuition,” the association’s press release said.
Wagner said he is also working on an education transparency bill, which would ensure public access to live broadcasts or recordings of Board of Education meetings, from K-12 to the college level. He said he’s still working out the details, but wants to encourage school districts and college boards to adopt the best practice of posting recordings of public meetings online.
Policymakers are expected to release more detailed versions of their legislative concepts in January, before the short session begins on February 5.
Wagner said lawmakers have put colleges and universities on a good path this biennium with higher-than-expected funding during the 2023 session. While he said he doesn’t expect any massive changes in higher education in 2024 given the time constraints of the short session, he also said he doesn’t want to miss He was mindful of the need to make higher education and workforce training more accessible.
“It is the backbone of our economy to be able to have a 21st century vision for postsecondary education and workforce training,” Wagner said while discussing legislative priorities at the Oregon Action Plan Leadership Summit earlier this week. “It gets me out of bed every morning.”
Sammy Edge covers higher education and politics for The Oregonian. You can access it at sedge@oregonian.com Or (503) 260-3430.
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on higher education has been significant, particularly for recent graduates of community colleges. In response, lawmakers are now considering expanding financial aid for these graduates to help alleviate the financial burden they may be facing. The proposed expansion signals a recognition of the unique challenges faced by pandemic graduates and a commitment to supporting them as they work to navigate the post-pandemic economy. As the issue comes to the forefront in legislative sessions, the potential for this expansion to positively impact the lives of many recent graduates is a topic of great importance and interest.