Ariel Polanco didn’t see many opportunities beyond high school as he was growing up, but his aspirations extended far beyond the Providence neighborhoods he called home.
“I just wanted to see more and do more for myself than was being offered at the time,” Polanco said.
When graduation came around, Polanco opted to enlist in the military and went to Japan in 2017 as a member of the U.S. Marine Corps where he worked as an aircraft mechanic.
After completing four years of military duty – which was partly interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic – Polanco says his service enabled him to receive several years of tuition benefits.
He enrolled in Rhode Island College in 2021 but still needed some financial assistance. That’s where the Hope Scholarship came in, a program that covers the final two years of tuition for qualified students attending RIC.
“It really gives hope,” said Polanco, a junior studying computer science and cybersecurity. “Especially the last few years being some of the hardest two years that you’d have to go through in college.”
Polanco is one of 243 RIC students to receive a combined total of around $2.2 million of tuition assistance so far from the scholarship since it launched last fall.
The program, approved by the General Assembly in April 2023 with a $4 million allotment from the state’s general fund, is a “last dollar” scholarship that covers the funding gap for tuition and fees after the rest of a student’s financial aid is factored in, says Jennifer Boulay, interim director of the Hope Scholarship.
Criteria for Hope recipients include being a Rhode Island resident, maintaining a 2.5 GPA, staying on track to graduate in four years and committing to live, work or continue education within the state after graduation.
The scholarship hasn’t just brought hope to students. RIC’s once-dire financial outlook and enrollment figures appear to have turned a corner, too.
Previously, RIC leaders viewed the Community College of Rhode Island’s Rhode Island Promise scholarship, a free-tuition program that began in 2017, as potentially drawing students away from RIC. Between fall 2017 and 2018, RIC’s full-time freshmen enrollment fell 19% and transfer applications dropped by 17.3%. The decline actually started before Rhode Island Promise. Over 10 years, RIC’s enrollment fell around 33%, from 8,700 to 5,787.
But the college saw improvement last fall when the overall number of applications increased by 800, bringing the total up to over 6,000, a high mark in recent years. Within that, the school received 591 transfer applications for fall 2024 – more than half of which came from CCRI – a 44% increase over the previous year, according to RIC spokesperson John Taraborelli.
A spokesperson for CCRI did not directly answer PBN’s questions about the effects of the Hope program on enrollment at the community college, but she said the school backs programs that help students.
“We believe Rhode Island Promise continues to be the best value for Rhode Island students and families, and we support all programs that open doors to students to obtain a postsecondary credential,” spokesperson Amy Kempe said in a statement.
At RIC, the combined freshman and transfer enrollment in fall 2023 was up 18% over the previous year. And the number of students who are attending school full time increased by 159 last fall, possibly because Hope Scholarship recipients are trying to stay on their graduation track, RIC President Jack Warner said.
“We think Hope might have had something to do with that,” Warner said. “We really promoted it as a great affordable option for students.”
RIC’s financial situation brightened, too. Warner says previous projections of a $10.6 million loss in fiscal year 2025 have narrowed to around $1 million to $2 million, if that.
“The numbers are nowhere near what we were looking at a couple of years ago,” Warner said.
Boulay says the Hope Scholarship is sparking changes across the school as students on track to graduate within four years are taking advantage of courses offered in the summer and between semesters, registering for more classes and declaring majors earlier.
“Hope is the catalyst for change,” Boulay said. “What we’re finding through Hope [is helping] all students because we can better advise students on how to stay on track.”
While the Hope Scholarship pilot is set to expire in 2028, Gov. Daniel J. McKee has already submitted a budget amendment to extend the program through July 1, 2030.
Warner says he’s optimistic about the survival of the scholarship because of the support, not only from McKee but those backing legislation in the General Assembly to extend the program.
Boulay says extending the program is important because tracking the full cycle from the time a student learns about the program to when that student graduates both high school and college will allow for a better understanding of the program’s effectiveness.
Now as Polanco is planning to graduate in spring 2025, he is hopeful he will be ready to launch a career in cybersecurity, working in website or app development.
“Knowing that there’s a growing field in cybersecurity got me excited to step into something new that can one day become really great,” Polanco said.
