PFS Lessons Learned from the College Access and Success Provider Perspective

Third Sector recently co-hosted a webinar with two college access and success providers, uAspire and College Forward, to discuss “Pay for Success Lessons Learned from the Provider Perspective.” As providers have a track record of supporting students day-to-day and understand firsthand what resources are necessary to ensure that students enroll in and graduate from institutions of higher education, the webinar focused on providing a platform for providers to share lessons learned with the four Pay for Success in Higher Education cohort sites. In the webinar, uAspire reflected on the organization’s growth since conducting a 2017 Pay for Success (PFS) feasibility study with Third Sector, and College Forward elaborated on lessons learned from launching the nation’s first Pay for Success project in Texas with the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation. The Kresge Foundation generously funds Third Sector’s engagement with the Pay for Success in Higher Education cohort, as well as uAspire and College Forward.

The webinar is the first step of generating an ongoing conversation between providers and systems or institutions of higher education on how PFS can advance college access and success support efforts. Third Sector has selected six providers who submitted to the provider Request for Information, in addition to uAspire and College Forward, to formally provide input to the four cohort sites working towards building PFS pilots. The full list of providers we have selected to directly engage with systems, beginning at the National College Access Network Conference and as part of the Pay for Success in Higher Education cohort, is below:

As Austin, CEO of College Forward, shared during the webinar: “I’ve seen the power of what a college education can mean, and what the absence of it can mean. [A college degree] is real as a pathway out of poverty.” Third Sector is excited to continue building pathways for providers to work closely in partnership with systems and institutions of higher education to center Pay for Success in higher education pilots in improving student outcomes.