What happened to MCC's Promise program?

McHenry County College's Promise scholarship program will yield its first graduates this spring, but only one in five original scholarship recipients are still in the program.

Officials won't know until after spring break how many of the 180 students still part of Promise are expected to graduate.

In the fall of 2009, 940 students were accepted into the program, which offered free tuition for in-district students fresh out of high school who enrolled full time, maintained a minimum 2.0 GPA (on a 4-point scale) and volunteered 16 hours per semester. Another 148 students had applied for Promise at kickoff, but ended up receiving full federal tuition funding.

Local donors pledged $2.3 million to the program, managed by the Friends of MCC Foundation and described as the biggest community-funded scholarship program in the college's history.

The “quick facts” section about the Promise program on the foundation website states: “Statistics show that for every $1,000 of financial aid offered to a student, the probability of him/her attending college increases by 24 percent.”

That may have not worked out in this case, but foundation interim Executive Director Bill Brennan said: “We are very proud of how we encouraged students to come to MCC. Our pillars are affordability and accessibility.”

So why did hundreds of students — nearly 400 in the first semester alone — drop out of the program and miss their chance at free tuition for their MCC careers?

An early decision

Scholarship programs with criteria as broad as Promise's are rare. Representatives from Harper College, College of DuPage, College of Lake County and Elgin Community College said their institutions offer many scholarships options, but none like Promise.

“We do not have anything like Promise. I don't know that anyone does,” said Phil Burdick, Harper College's chief communications officer.

Foundation officials decided to halt admissions into Promise shortly after the program started, realizing that it had become “very challenging” with enrollment three times as large as expected, foundation board President Todd Bessey said. The program is officially ending this semester.

As of last month, officials had collected $1.6 million of the initial $2.3 million pledge, and about $178,000 remained in the Promise fund, Brennan said.

All the money was used solely to pay for student tuition, and once the semester ends all but a couple of thousand dollars will be left, he said. No more donations are being taken.

Promise donors were all local and pledged between $10 and $1 million.

Donors Michael and Judy Luecht of Lake in the Hills pledged $1 million to Promise. Luecht is the president and CEO of ML Realty Partners, of Itasca, but the donation was personal, he said.

Luecht believes the program lived up to its mission.

“We made this donation to give access to higher education to people,” he said. “We purposefully made the donation to make sure those who were having trouble could go to college.”

Students' responsibility

Promise students were eligible to receive free tuition for 12 credit hours per semester, or $984 at the current rate. For those who qualify for some federal aid or other scholarships, Promise covers the remaining tuition.

By the end of the first semester, 246 students fell short of the minimum 2.0 GPA requirement, officials said.

“It's not about their intelligence level but their ability to transition (from high school to college) and be a self-starter,” said Christina Haggerty, MCC's director of marketing and public relations.

The minimum GPA requirement was raised to 2.5 after the first semester “to keep the students challenged,” Haggerty said, adding that current Promise students have a 3.15 GPA average. “That shows to us that they are achievers, they are working hard.”

Students were expected to turn in federal financial aid forms before each semester, Haggerty said. In at least one instance during the course of the program, dozens of students were mistakenly dropped and then reinstated into Promise once their financial aid paperwork was properly processed.

Officials said they gave students plenty of support, via letters and e-mails, reminding them to log their volunteer hours and submit paperwork. “The communication was very solid,” Brennan said.

Nineteen-year-old Nicole Nootens is among 521 students who dropped out of Promise but are still enrolled at MCC, a retention rate that officials call positive.

“I didn't get my paperwork in on time,” said Nootens, who lives in McHenry. “I learned that getting paperwork in on time is very important.”

Students were provided with a list of 163 social service agencies in McHenry County at which they could fulfill their volunteer requirement, and more than 50 workshops were held to address issues and questions from students, said foundation president Bessey.

Looking for answers

MCC officials don't know exactly why so many students dropped out of Promise but will gather information in the next few weeks and decide whether to launch a different incarnation of the scholarship program in the future, Brennan said.

Although the college doesn't have firm numbers, some Promise students transferred to 4-year institutions, MCC spokeswoman Haggerty said. The rate of completion of an associate degree at MCC is 27 percent, so Promise numbers don't lag too far behind, she said.

“Without having done a study, we're speculating,” said Bessey. “We've talked to a handful of students to get some idea.”

Student Jeff Baker, 20, of Crystal Lake believes the requirements were too much of a burden for some students. Baker is a Promise student who expects to graduate in May.

“I think a lot of kids didn't take it seriously,” he said. “They thought, ‘Oh, free college, I'll show up,' but then it became a lot of work.”

Students' goals and commitment are crucial in evaluating the results of Promise, said Eva Dreikurs Ferguson, a psychology professor at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville.

Just because something is free, it doesn't mean that people will hold onto it, especially when obstacles arise, said Ferguson, who wrote the book, “Motivation: A Biosocial and Cognitive Integration of Motivation and Emotion.”

“If you promise me a horse for free, I say, ‘Riding will be nice.' But as soon as I fall off the first time, or something happens, I decide I don't want to be bothered,” she said.

Community benefits

The volunteering requirement had a “massive impact” on the area, as Promise students logged more than 33,000 hours of community service hours in 3½ semesters, Bessey said.

Jessica Cortes, 20, a Promise student who expects to graduate this fall, said volunteering at the First Way Life Center in Johnsburg was good for her.

“I was really shy and I was afraid of anyone who seemed official,” said Cortes, who this semester is volunteering at the Angels With Wings resale shop in Crystal Lake. “After volunteering the shyness went away, mostly.”

The volunteerism requirement was the biggest hurdle for most students who dropped out, Cortes said.

“Volunteering is not for everyone,” she said. “I think that sometimes college students just want things handed to them.”

Baker said Promise pushed him to do something good by volunteering for Free Guitars for Future Stars, a program that offers free guitar lessons to low-income youths.

“I was in high school basically doing nothing,” he said. “Then (with Promise) I started doing a lot of things, interacting with adults, working with underprivileged youth. It made me a lot more conscious.”