The Upjohn Institute has updated and expanded its Promise Programs Database, first created in 2018. Fifty-five programs have been added to the initial 89 in the original database, bringing the total number of programs to 144. The database includes only those scholarship programs that are geographically bounded below the state level and that create an element of early awareness around college-going in their respective communities.
The database also presents two measures of scholarship quality generated algorithmically from the data—intensity, which refers to the size of the incentive created by the program, and saturation, which refers to the proportion of students likely to be eligible for the scholarship.
The online database can be used to:
- Generate profiles of individual Promise programs,
- Compare up to three programs at once by viewing their characteristics side by side, or
- Search for programs by characteristics such as year established, state, type of funder and requirements.
Behind the web interface is a richer database that includes dozens of additional characteristics of each scholarship, as well as demographic information about the community in which it is located. The full file, in Excel format, is available on request.
We hope that this update will be of use to Promise stakeholders, researchers, and media, as the place-based scholarship model continues to spread.