CCRI & Raimondo's RI Promise Claims Are Not Supported By School's Documents

CCRI & Raimondo's RI Promise Claims Are Not Supported By School's Documents

Documents unveiled by GoLocal show that claims by the Community College of Rhode Island (CCRI) and Governor Gina Raimondo relating to the success of the free-tuition RI Promise program are not supported by school documents.

The head the CCRI Faculty Association -- Steve Murray -- is requesting a full accountability and disclosure of the raw data.

According to the documents obtained last spring, 720 "RI Promise, non-Pell Grant" students entered the program in 2017, with 208 on track to meet the standards for an award in year two.

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CCRI, however, counted all 1,577 first-time, full-time students entering in 2017 as part of its "Promise" cohort -- whether they received free-tuition through the Promise program or not. 

Neither the college nor the Governor's office will answer questions relating to inflating the number of Promise students as the basis of their claims.

"62.4 percent of our Promise students returned in the fall of 2018," said CCRI President Meghan Hughes in a letter to the community, taking into account the retention rate for all 1,577 students -- not the Promise recipients.

Murray fired back that the college should release all the data -- in its raw form.

"So that we can have a truly accurate accounting of how RI Promise has performed after the first year – as I’ve been asking for from the outset of the program, please release all of the RI Promise raw data, including: how many RI Promise students failed to achieve 30 credits and/or a 2.5 gpa in the first year of the program; the mean and median gpa of all RI Promise students for the first year; the mean and median number of credits earned by all RI Promise students for the first year; and a complete accounting of how every dollar received by the College for RI Promise has been spent.

 

Numbers in Question

Murray had raised questions after the initial first-year numbers were released last week. 

"From what we have in this 'Enrollment Update' -- 38% of the RI Promise students failed to return for year two -- and of those that did return, we haven’t yet been told how many of the returnees failed to complete the first year successfully," said Murray, "I wouldn’t call RI Promise a success or a good use of the taxpayers money."

"I can’t imagine that of the 62% that returned that they all completed 30 credits with a 2.5 GPA. When the College finally chooses to release these numbers, I believe we will see that many RI Promise students did not successfully complete their first year," said Murray.

This story was first published 10/3/18 12:30 PM