September 9, 2026
For the past two decades, a growing number of communities have sought to make college easier to access for local students through the creation of place-based scholarship programs. These tuition-free pathways, sometimes called “Promise” programs, deliver a clear and early message to students and families about college affordability while offering financial and academic support to promote student success.
A new evaluation of one such program, the Columbus Promise, finds that it dramatically boosted college enrollment, with gains sustained over three years, and increased the number of local students achieving credentials.
With the chief goal of increasing enrollment at Columbus State Community College (CSCC), the Columbus Promise gives students graduating from Columbus City Schools (the high-poverty public school district serving much of the urban core) the ability to attend CSCC tuition-free after other sources of grant aid are applied. The program also provides students with dedicated academic support, coaching, bus passes, and a $500-per-semester stipend to help with their expenses. The Columbus Promise is available for six semesters and allows students to attend part-time, providing flexibility for those who need to work while completing their classes.
Launched as a three-year pilot in 2022, the Columbus Promise was created through a partnership of the city of Columbus, the school district, the college, and a local college-access organization called “I Know I Can.” The program will continue for at least another three years.
Promise programs have been studied for decades, but because rigorous evaluation is still rare, it’s not well understood how effective these programs are at increasing enrollment or how students fare once they’re in college. In a new report analyzing the pilot period, the Upjohn Institute’s Michelle Miller-Adams, Kyle Huisman, Kevin Hollenbeck, and Bridget Timmeney studied the progress of the first three classes of Columbus Promise students—high school graduates of 2022, 2023, and 2024—and compared them to students from the same school district who attended Columbus State between 2017 and 2021. They found that the rate of enrollment and number of graduates attending the college more than doubled after the Columbus Promise was introduced.
Crucially—and contrary to suggestions made by critics—increased enrollment did not come at the expense of students attending other colleges. The graph below shows that, after the introduction of the Columbus Promise, the number of local high school graduates enrolled in colleges and universities increased overall, with the number of graduates attending community college surging. Meanwhile, the number of those attending other public universities remained relatively unchanged both before and after the introduction of the program.
Debates over whether making college more accessible to a wider array of students who might not otherwise attend—and what amount of money it’s worth investing in that goal—will surely continue. But on one question, the research is clear: the Columbus Promise succeeded in increasing the number of students attending community college by making it tuition-free and building strong support around the high-school-to-college handoff.
With a larger flow of students to and through community college, the Columbus Promise is also yielding new certificates and associate degrees that strengthen the local workforce. This benefit does not exist in a vacuum: According to other Upjohn Institute research, each additional associate degree delivered translates to over $150,000 in a person’s lifetime earnings, benefiting both individuals and their communities.
The evaluation documents the impact of the Columbus Promise in its first three years, while “Nine takeaways for the tuition-free college movement from the Columbus Promise” summarizes broader lessons for the Promise community, including how a relatively low-cost tuition guarantee can generate large enrollment gains and create new opportunities for individuals and communities alike.
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