• Futures for Frontliners, Michigan’s free tuition program for essential workers during the pandemic, is wrapping up.
• More than 6,000 residents earned either an associate degree or certificate. Some began the program by first earning their high school diploma.
• About 1 in 4 residents who enrolled in college with the scholarship earned a credential, which state officials regard as a success. But some say more data is needed to evaluate the taxpayer-funded program.

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This story is a collaboration between Bridge Michigan and Open Campus. 

When the global pandemic began in 2020, Griffin Nowell was among the few people who left their homes before a vaccine was available to work on what was known as the front lines. 

Nowell had dropped out of college a few months earlier after graduating from high school, unsure of what he wanted to do.

While living with his mother on the west side of the state in St. Joseph, Nowell found odd jobs at a doggie day care center and two restaurants. When the pandemic locked down businesses and most people were working from home or not at all, Nowell was cooking and running the cash register at one of the few restaurants that were open, earning $13 an hour plus tips.

Three months later, he saw that the state was offering free college tuition for people working on the front lines during the pandemic, inspiring him to go back to college. In January 2021, he went to Southwestern Michigan College for a year with the Futures for Frontliners scholarship, transferred to Ferris State University and earned a bachelor’s degree in construction management. Nowell, 25, is now living on his own in Big Rapids, engaged to be married and working a job he loves with a salary that nearly tripled to $72,500 annually.

He is among thousands of residents who graduated from what was hailed as the nation’s first free-tuition program for essential workers, Michigan’s Future for Frontliners scholarship program. 

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Announced in September 2020, Futures for Frontliners was funded with $49 million in federal and state funds. It was open to 625,000 state residents deemed essential workers in Michigan during lockdown orders. It generated enthusiasm during a grim time and a blueprint for the state to create a bigger tuition scholarship for adults to boost the percentage of Michigan residents with postsecondary credentials. 

Futures for Frontliners is wrapping up and state officials are calling it a success. Preliminary data shows that more than 6,000 graduates earned an associate degree or certificate, or 1 in 4 who enrolled –  with more than 90% of students earning an associate degree. Some say the outcome, though not final, is low. But others say it is not surprising, given the challenges everyone faced during the pandemic — especially essential workers potentially needing child care or transportation. 

Higher education advocates have embraced a mantra that going to college is not enough, students must graduate. But critics are expanding that narrative, saying that taxpayer-funded scholarship programs such as Futures for Frontliners should offer deeper data that tracks the number of students who get post-graduation jobs, what kind of positions they land and how much they earn after graduation. 

Illuminating all those benchmarks is Nowell’s path that landed him a job as an assistant site superintendent at First Companies, a construction management firm in Caledonia, southeast of Grand Rapids. But it’s unclear how many others share in the same success as a result of the Michigan’s Futures for Frontliners program because the state hasn’t tracked data beyond how many students graduated.

“It gave me a drastic leg up to cover the costs of college,” said Nowell  “It also piqued my interest because I don’t think I was ever going to go back to college had I not seen that (the Futures for Frontliners program). But I was like – it’s free! So what do I lose other than a little bit of time if I try? So I did, and it worked out pretty well for me.”

Like hazard pay for heroes 

Futures for Frontliners was the brainchild of Brandy Johnson, who previously served as the education policy advisor during the first term of Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

Before the scholarship was created, Whitmer set a statewide goal to increase the percentage of residents with a postsecondary credential to 60% by 2030 joining more than two dozen other states that had already set similar goals in the previous decade. At the time, 49.1% percent of Michigan residents age 25-64 held a postsecondary credential; it increased to 51.8% in 2023.

Johnson knew Futures for Frontliners would better train state’s workforce but saw it more as a thank you and benefit to frontline workers without degrees who risked their lives by working in grocery stores or other essential businesses early in the pandemic. 

Futures for Frontliners was akin to hazard pay, she added, loosely modeled on the federal government’s G.I. Bill, which provided educational opportunities to World War II veterans.

“It was a similar sentiment in that these are heroes who paid a great debt to our society and we wanted to thank them by putting them on a path to prosperity,” said Johnson, who is now president of the Michigan Community College Association.

Whitmer’s 2020 announcement for the Futures for Frontliners had a few requirements: Scholarship recipients had to be Michigan residents without a degree; not in default of a federal student loan; worked in an essential field at least partly outside their home and at least part-time for 11 weeks between April 1 – June 30, 2020. The deadline to apply was December 31, 2020.

The scholarship attracted 120,000 applicants, according to data provided by the Michigan Lifelong Education, Advancement and Potential (MiLEAP). About 85,000 of them qualified. Meanwhile, 183 residents earned a high school diploma or equivalent in a separate pathway that was part of the program. Ultimately, 27,000 residents enrolled in a college. Those who earned a degree or certificate were 6,450 people as of 2023-24.

That’s 24% of those who enrolled who earned a credential, which is below the national four-year community college graduation rate of 43.5%, which includes many more populations of students beyond working adults.

Going to college as an adult while working a full time job can be epic, said Detroit resident Nathaniel Hawkins, 37. He is enrolled in his last semester at  Washtenaw Community College District in Detroit but can see why so many people who were in the program didn’t make it to the finish line.

Hawkins has worked several jobs and taken courses at several colleges over the years after graduating from the now-defunct Flint Northern High School. He now works 10 p.m.-6:30 a.m. as a custodian in an Oakland County school district, earning $17.85 an hour. After getting off work, he gets a few hours of sleep before heading to classes several days a week. Sometimes, he doesn’t have time to sleep to make it to an 11 a.m. class. 

Juggling it all is a challenge but he was expecting to finish his classes that would earn him an associate degree in criminal justice in December and hopes to land a better paying job soon.

“Criminal justice has always been a passion of mine,” said Hawkins. “My hope is to get an entry level position and go back to college to complete my bachelor’s degree.”

‘Now I can actually relax’ 

Many Futures for Frontliners scholars also earned a credential, awarded for completing shorter courses of study than the typical two-year path required to earn an associate degree. Of those who earned a credential, 5,868, or 91%, earned an associate degree; 1,334 earned a certificate and more than 750 earned both. The top fields where graduates earned degrees were in health professions; liberal arts; business, management, marketing; computer sciences and engineering.

The graduates were 71% female, 28% male; 75% were white, 13% Black, 5% Hispanic, 1% Asian and 1% Native American.

Futures for Frontliners  technically ended at the end of the 2024-25 school year but state officials say that 150 students are still enrolled because of  leaves of absences permitted by colleges that allowed their eligibility in 2025-2026.

Though there are still students in the Futures for Frontliners pipeline and data from 2024-25 is not included in the final numbers, state officials called the program a success.

“When we talk about having 6,500 people in this state with a skill certificate or degree, we see that as a win,” Michelle Richard, who previously served as  deputy director of the Michigan Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement, and Potential (MiLEAP), recently told Bridge Michigan. 

“We see that as people who have saved money while they pursued their education,” Richard continued. “We also see that as people who have skills that are ready to position them for better paying jobs right here in Michigan.”

Among those with a better livelihood as a result of the scholarship include Pamela Syfert, who earned an associate degree in general studies from Grand Rapids Community College in 2023, 36 years after she started. Syfert, who lives on the west side of Michigan in Wyoming, was earning $18 an hour while working at a chemical company during the pandemic. She now earns 40% more as a senior account executive at Atlas Molded Products. While her journey was long, the scholarship helped her leave behind the need to work two, even three jobs for most of her life. 

“There was no way I could have paid for my tuition and books instead of my rent with what I was making back then.” said Syfert, 57. “That’s why it took me so long because I didn’t have the money.

“Now I can actually relax and have fun and do things,” she said. “I like having money to do things and splurge now and then and not live paycheck to paycheck.”

Measuring success 

It’s not clear how many other Futures for Frontlines graduates have landed new jobs, or how much their income has increased as a result of the scholarship because state officials have not collected this data.

The data that is collected aligns with statutory requirements and additional information isavailable on MiLEAP’s Data Sharing Center, said MiLEAP spokesperson Aundreana Jones-Poole.

Any program that uses taxpayer dollars should have an evaluation mechanism in place that includes measurable outcomes in order to evaluate the program’s success, said Molly Macek, director of education policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a free market, nonprofit think tank.

The percentage of students who earned a credential with the Futures for Frontliners scholarship is one outcome. But stronger data to evaluate its effectiveness would include comparing those who graduated with community college students not participating in the program along with what kind of jobs students are landing and their new incomes.

“The percentage of students who earned a credential seems pretty low, only a quarter of students who received a scholarship completed and earned a credential,” said Macek. “It would be more effective if that number were higher but I don’t know … what the state is trying to achieve other than the 60 by 30 goal.”

Michigan is trying to make it easier for residents to earn a credential so they can increase their opportunities, Jones-Poole said. She noted that even as Futures for Frontliners winds down, the state also offers the Michigan Reconnect scholarship for adults ages 25 or older.

“Reconnect builds on the same goal that guided Futures for Frontliners, removing financial barriers so more Michiganders can gain the skills and credentials needed to advance in today’s workforce,” Jones-Poole said.

Unlike other state initiatives across the country aimed at bolstering credentials, Futures for Frontliners did not require potential students to pursue a degree in a high-demand field to align with workforce needs, said Maria Cormier, a researcher at Community College Research Center at Columbia University’s Teachers College in New York.

While the number of preliminary graduates is on the low side, Cormier said that the pandemic was a challenging time for all students in higher education, not just working adults potentially facing transportation or child care issues. Additionally, she said, most students in Futures for Frontliners earned an associate degree, not a short-term certificate, and those lead to jobs with higher wages.

As for deeper metrics to determine success of Futures for Frontliners, Cormier agrees that is needed in Michigan, and for all state initiatives. But Michigan’s community college system is decentralized, making it more difficult than it would be in other states. Even so, deeper accountability measures are starting to unfold with some states hiring an outside evaluator for a more nuanced examination of a program’s effectiveness. 

“We need to know the return on investment,” Cormier said. “States are investing large sums of money in these programs.”

Workforce development has long been among the missions of community colleges but investments by states has exploded to more than $5 billion in recent years, she added. While there is some evidence of what works, she said more information is needed to help shape the future.

“The field is far away from knowing – What is the best way to support adult learners?” Cornier said. 

A career transition

Michigan is among at least a dozen states that created educational initiatives that used federal funding from Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, according to the Lumina Foundation, which promotes higher education.

It’s not a new idea that state or federal funds are used to create short-term programs to help workers transition to new careers during an economic downturn, said Kermit Kaleba, strategy director for credentials of value for Lumina Foundation. What is surprising is that some states turned investments in these programs during the pandemic into permanent state initiatives.

This is important, Kaleba said, because, “historically we have not made adult learners a priority in this country.”

Futures for Frontliners helped Jessica Causey make herself a priority after raising her four children, and earn a better income.

She had wanted to go to college since she was in sixth grade but dropped out of high school when she was a junior and pregnant.

During the pandemic, while working as the store manager at a Little Caesars Pizza in Cheyboygen and after supporting her family over the years, she decided it was time. 

Causey spent five months studying for her GED while working 75 hours a week. She then enrolled at North Central Michigan College in Petoskey. She earned an associate degree in business management in December 2023, graduating with honors, after enrolling full time, working 70 hours a week, getting a divorce and becoming a single mother.

Shortly before graduating, she was promoted to director of operations for six Little Caesars, a job that boosted her income by more than $20,000.

But the most important part for Causey, 42, was being a role model to her daughter and three sons, now ranging in age from 18- 24, after always pushing them to chase their dreams

Said Causey: “It proved to myself and my children that no matter what choices you make in life, you can always go back and better your life.”

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