Some Colorado colleges enroll more first-generation students

Should they get funding?

BY JASON GONZALES CHALKBEAT COLORADO

Colorado colleges and universities would get a special designation if they enroll a high number of students who are the rst in their families to go to college, under a bill at the Capitol this year.

e largely symbolic measure has fed a bigger debate about how Colorado funds its public colleges. It also spurred a conversation about what rst-generation students need to be successful.

e rst generation-serving label that House Bill 1114 would create would attach to schools that enroll those students at a higher rate than the state average. It would also require Colorado’s higher education department to track how well students do at those schools.

e bill would not require schools to create additional programs to help those students get to and through college. Nor would it o er colleges more money to provide such support.

Money and support make a di erence for students, said Diane Schorr, director of advocacy and initiatives at the Center for First-generation Student Success. She questioned why the state wouldn’t ensure colleges with the new designation get either.

“What I would have liked to have seen is what’s being required of the institution?” Schorr said.

Supporters of the bill — including Metropolitan State University and Colorado Mesa University — would like to prod the state to better fund schools that serve a large share of rst-generation students. ese schools often have lower graduation rates, something that works against them in Colorado’s funding formula. It also costs a lot of money to run the programs that help rst-generation students.

Opponents of the bill, including Colorado State University, say that who enrolls the most rst-generation students shouldn’t matter. Instead, they say that state funding should follow those students wherever they enroll. With limited state funding for higher education, more money for certain institutions can mean less for others. is story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe. at/newsletters