How We See the Problem
Leveraging workforce training, transferring between postsecondary providers and entering or re-entering the workforce are pivotal moments in a learner’s career or academic journey. Institutions and systems can implement policies and practices that inadvertently make these transitions difficult. For example, when curricula don’t align, or information systems are incapable of sharing data effectively, students risk losing credits, momentum and money. The jump from postsecondary education into the workforce also presents challenges, especially when institutions offer programming that does not align with the skills employers need.
Our Three Investment Priorities
Grants to Streamline Key Learner Transitions
Exploring TRIO's Capacity to Provide Career Development to Low-Income Students
Exploration
This grant supports the Pell Institute, the research arm of the Council for Opportunity in Education, in exploring the capacity for federally-funded TRIO programs to provide more robust career development and support services to the low-income college students they serve. This study is the first to explore opportunities to leverage TRIO programs in service of post-college career outcomes.
Establishing a Data Use Challenge to Inform Education & Workforce Transitions
Scaling
This grant supports Coleridge Initiative in developing and launching a data use challenge and call for proposals to solicit data-driven ideas that inform education and workforce transitions. Ascendium will select individual data challenge projects to support from a set of proposals submitted by Coleridge Initiative during the grant period. The selected projects will link education and workforce data, provide states the relevant data analysis capacity to answer critical questions about student progression and inform evidence-based policies and practices that support learners from low-income backgrounds.
Building a National Apprenticeship Intermediary Infrastructure
Exploration
This grant supports Apprenticeships for America in creating the first national network of apprenticeship intermediaries in the United States and developing research to support the role of intermediaries with the goal of expanding apprenticeship opportunities nationwide.
Actualizing Community Vibrancy Metrics
Exploration
This grant supports Achieving the Dream (ATD) in helping its member colleges collect and use learner- and community-level data to drive college-wide reform. ATD will pilot the use of its new Community Vibrancy metrics framework with 15 colleges, learning how the metrics can be applied to drive change and produce tools and a training curriculum to support broader adoption across ATD’s 300+ member institutions.
Learning Partner for Future Sectoral Training Evidence-Building Initiative
Validation
This grant supports MDRC in partnering with Ascendium to design a grantmaking initiative that will build next-generation evidence on sectoral training programs. The initiative will identify the conditions and mechanisms needed to deliver and scale effective programs.
STEM Transfer Partnerships
Exploration
This grant supports the University of Washington in implementing a statewide consortium of institutional partnerships to increase successful transfer for low-income learners in STEM programs. Relying on the evidence-based framework for transfer partnerships developed by the institution's Community College Research Initiatives, this project endeavors to institutionalize collaborative partnerships at the departmental level, leading to long-term structural improvements in transfer policy and practice.
College Promise Careers Institute, Promise Regional Convenings, & Expanding Ecosystems for Promise Student Support
Scaling
This grant supports the College Promise Campaign (CPC) in providing professional development and technical assistance to new and existing Promise programs by hosting regional workshops and its fourth annual College Promise Careers Institute. CPC will also expand work focused on developing career pathways for Promise students in high-growth labor market segments.
Exploring Geographic Isolation as a Barrier to Equitable Transfer Outcomes
Exploration
This grant supports the RP Group in assessing the role of proximity to four-year institutions in the transfer outcomes of low-income and Latinx students in California in order to identify ways to strengthen transfer policy and practice, particularly in states with large rural areas not well served by broad access four-year institutions.
Community College Growth Engine Fund Expansion
Exploration
This grant supports Education Design Lab (The Lab) in deploying the Community College Growth Engine Fund with two community college systems. The Lab will support the design and pilot of employer-validated micro-pathways to connect low-income learners to economic mobility.
Community Colleges as Apprenticeship Intermediaries: Learning What Works
Exploration
This grant supports New America Foundation in exploring the role of apprenticeship intermediaries. New America will conduct research to identify effective community college apprenticeship intermediaries and offer policy and practice recommendations for community colleges to scale this strategy.
