WHY MEDIA PARTNERSHIPS?
High-quality reporting and storytelling are vital for investigating, proposing, and disseminating systemic solutions to challenges faced by learners from low-income backgrounds. When media highlight problems alongside evidence-based solutions, successful practices have the potential to scale up. Media amplification can also encourage individual policymakers, communities, and government agencies to address critical issues in improving postsecondary education and workforce training outcomes. By framing and amplifying the issues critical to improving postsecondary education and workforce training outcomes, media partners get important information in front of those who can advocate for and make real, systemic change.
Learn more about how our media partnerships support learners from low-income backgrounds.
Bringing Forward Underserved Learners’ Experiences
The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Different Voices of Student Success lifts underserved learners’ experiences and shares best practices for supporting them.
Connecting Postsecondary Education, Training, and Work
The Job, a weekly newsletter from Work Shift News, provides in-depth coverage on education, training, and work, equipping policymakers and others with the information they need to act on it.
Empowering Incarcerated Learners on their Postsecondary Education Journeys
Roadtrip Nation’s video and digital storytelling on postsecondary education in prison connects incarcerated learners, and those who support them, with narratives to help them define their own road in life.
Highlighting Solutions in Postsecondary Education and Workforce Training
The Hechinger Report produces high-quality reporting on research, reforms, and promising solutions with the goal of improving the American education system.
Supporting National Reporting on Postsecondary Education in Prison
Open Campus’ biweekly newsletter College Inside investigates the future of postsecondary education in prison by focusing on incarcerated learners’ stories.
Supporting National Reporting on Rural Postsecondary Education and Workforce Training
Open Campus’ bimonthly newsletter Mile Markers explores the voices and issues shaping postsecondary education and workforce training in rural communities.
Strengthening Media Coverage of Postsecondary Education Topics
The Education Writers Association is the go-to resource for education writers, supporting the expansion of high-quality, thoughtful media coverage nationwide.
Reporting on Postsecondary Education Pathways in Wisconsin
Wisconsin Watch, one of the nation’s longest-standing nonprofit newsrooms, helps residents explore pathways to improving their communities and lives.
Listening to What’s Next in Postsecondary Education
Academic Intelligence’s Future U. podcast series examines the postsecondary education landscape through interviews with national thought leaders and innovators.Introduction to Strategic Evidence Planning for Ascendium Exploration Grantees
Field Development
This grant supports Project Evident in identifying Ascendium-funded nonprofits ready to develop roadmaps for building and using evidence to generate stronger outcomes.
Expanding the Coverage of Postsecondary Education and Workforce Training through the Rural News Network
Field Development
This grant supports the Institute for Nonprofit News’ Rural News Network in collaborating with ten rural newsrooms to develop greater coverage of postsecondary education and workforce training issues in rural communities and highlight the experiences of rural learners.
Accelerating Sustainable Change: Deepening the Chronicle's Student Success Coverage
Field Development
This grant supports The Chronicle of Higher Education in developing multimedia and interactive content for the Different Voices of Student Success Resource Center, which highlights insights about improving learner outcomes, social mobility, and the reskilling of workers.
Supporting Work Shift and The Job's National Reporting on Workforce Training Pathways
Field Development
This grant supports Work Shift News, a project of Open Campus Media, in continuing and expanding its reporting focused on trends, opportunities, and challenges in postsecondary education and workforce training.
Supporting National Reporting on Postsecondary Education in Prison and Rural Postsecondary Education and Workforce Training
Field Development
This grant supports Open Campus Media in continuing and expanding its reporting focused on postsecondary education and workforce training issues impacting learner populations at the core of Ascendium’s philanthropic mission including incarcerated learners and rural learners from low-income backgrounds.
Transformation of the Postsecondary Landscape
Field Development
This grant supports Education Design Lab in strengthening the ability of colleges and states to better meet the needs of learners from low-income backgrounds — especially adult, parent, and working learners — through high-quality, workforce aligned training pathways. Grant-funded projects will specifically focus on strengthening capacity in rural community colleges to design and implement new pathways.
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