Rise Prize
For years, millions of students were stealth parents—juggling the demands of studying, raising children, and working almost completely under the radar. But in recent years, as a rapidly-changing economy and demographic shifts have heightened our focus on adult learners, the unique needs of student parents have gotten more attention.
And a new initiative—the Rise Prize—announced today, recognizes that while attention is important, action is even more so.
The prize, totalling $1M, is funded by Imaginable Futures, a venture of The Omidyar Group, and Lumina Foundation. It is designed to support creative, impact-driven organizations of all types in designing new tools, programs, and initiatives to help student parents succeed in postsecondary education.
This new effort extends Imaginable Future’s and Lumina’s growing focus on better understanding students parents’ unique assets and needs—and builds on path-breaking research by partners like Institute for Women’s Policy Research. Entangled Solutions’ 2018 report funded by Omidyar Network, “Parent Learners: Insights for Innovation,” in particular, highlighted the pain points in the current system and potential solutions—and this prize now aims to fund such innovations.
The need, and the potential for impact, are vast. About a quarter of the 17 million students enrolled in associates or bachelor’s degree programs are parents, and they account for a large portion of the 36 million Americans who have some college experience but no degree to show for it. Despite having higher GPAs than other students, student parents have higher dropout rates, take longer to complete credentials, and take on more debt than their nonparent peers. This represents a potentially life-altering setback for the individual—and it can negatively impact the trajectory of an entire family.
We must serve student parents better. And while the increased attention over the past few years has been critical, we’re still doing far too little to actually design education solutions for parents.
Financial aid is still built on the idea that students can attend college continuously and maintain at least six credit hours a semester—a challenge for many parents with jobs, and complex, unpredictable lives. Learning experiences, even those online, still require students to dedicate long, uninterrupted periods to studying or attending class, which isn’t realistic for parents whose time is shredded into bits. And childcare is only getting harder to manage, with institutions cutting, not adding, on-campus childcare centers at a time when costs for private care have reached astronomical levels.
This new prize is an important step in reimagining postsecondary education to better serve parents. It welcomes creative solutions from U.S. changemakers of any type or stage—from established non-profit higher education institutions to early stage for-profit tech companies. Applications for the Prize are open from February 12 to April 6, and winners will be announced on June 9 and 10 and at the Jobs For the Future Horizons conference.
Solutions might include innovative financing models, apps, services, or completely new types of educational programs. They’ll be working to answer a set of critical questions, such as, how might we:
- Reimagine how students pay for postsecondary education in order to both increase access and reduce debt for student parents?
- Improve access to flexible, quality childcare, and better connect student parents with community and government support?
- Use new learning delivery models to enable students to study anytime and on-the-go?
- Create new educational models that recognize and codify the unique skills—time management, creativity, grit—students develop through parenting?
We need educators, entrepreneurs, and non-profit organizations who aren’t just eager to talk about these questions, but who are ready to dig in and design solutions that can start answering them.
For more information, visit www.theriseprize.com
