Kansas City Scholars Program Expands Its Reach With $50 Million From Kauffman Foundation

The Kansas Metropolis Students program has added a brand new instructional help program that may pay tuition for adults who enroll in short-term profession coaching packages that put together them for high-demand, high-paying jobs. The growth has been supported by a $50 million grant made final fall by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Basis.

KC Students is a 501c3 shaped in 2016 as an outgrowth of the previous Kauffman Students program. This system’s aim is to extend the school completion fee and different kinds of postsecondary attainment for low- and modest-income college students and adults throughout the six-county, bi-state area surrounding Kansas Metropolis. It now gives 4 completely different types of monetary help, each supplemented with varied pupil help companies.

• The Faculty Financial savings Match supplies college students within the ninth grade a one-to-one match on school financial savings of as much as $1,000 and as much as $400 in extra incentives throughout highschool.
• Conventional Scholarships are aimed toward eleventh graders. These scholarships vary as much as $50,000 throughout 5 years of help for college students working towards a two or four-year diploma at one of many 17 colleges within the KC Students Postsecondary community.
• Grownup Learners Scholarships present adults, 18 years or older, as much as $50,000 in scholarship help, additionally for 5 years, towards a two or four-year diploma at any of the faculties within the KC Students Postsecondary community.
• Nice Jobs KC is the brand new program that may pay for highschool seniors and grownup learners to take part in authorized short-term profession coaching packages.

The general success of the the three authentic scholarship packages has grown dramatically prior to now seven years. For instance:

• greater than 6,000 college students, representing 103 space excessive colleges, have acquired monetary assist awards;
• of the recipients, 81% are people of shade and 77% are first-generation-to-college college students;
• amongst these highschool graduates receiving one of many conventional scholarships, greater than 90% have persevered towards their school diploma.

Nice Jobs KC was launched underneath the course of Earl Martin Phalen, CEO of KC Students. It’s off to a robust begin as nicely. Since its rollout late final yr, it’s already acquired greater than 900 functions and enrolled 470 individuals, greater than three-quarters of whom are racial/ethnic minorities. Thus far, 86 people have accomplished a coaching program.

This system focuses on careers that don’t require a university training however are in excessive demand within the Kansas Metropolis space similar to well being care, info know-how, development, and manufacturing.

Along with monetary help, it gives a complete suite of wrap-around companies to individuals, together with profession advising, assist in discovering and enrolling in authorized coaching packages, and the help of what is known as a “scholar advocate” who advises every participant by the primary yr of employment. (In truth, a scholar advocate is paired with each recipient of a KC Students scholarship.)

Nice Jobs KC additionally helps individuals discover help for inexpensive childcare and dependable transportation, two frequent obstacles to the profitable completion of training and profession coaching.

Angie Bessendorfer, the Government Vice President at KC Students, instructed me lately that the brand new program is especially important as a result of it “opens new doorways for the 1000’s of individuals in our area who need nice careers however who, for a wide range of causes, don’t need to go to school. Now we will provide the steerage and monetary help they want. We’re answering a name that we hear increasingly usually – each from employers and job seekers.”

Over the following decade, Nice Jobs KC goals to enroll as many as 50,000 individuals, and it tasks that sufficient will full their coaching to lead to 32,000 extra people beginning careers with anticipated annual earnings of $45,000 – $85,000.

“The Kauffman Basis has lengthy understood that there are a number of pathways past highschool for individuals to attain the success they need and deserve,” stated Aaron North, Kauffman Basis’s Vice President of Schooling on the time of the muse’s $50 million grant. “Our grants are designed to help the area with commonsense options along with sturdy help for two-year and four-year levels. The KC Students grant will form and catapult the area’s workforce preparedness for a few years to return.”