HECC details investments in Oregon colleges, workforce partners and warns Future Ready Oregon grants will sunset

For the record, Ben Cannon, executive director of the Higher Education Coordinating Commission, told the Education side committee on April 7 that the agency’s work centers on coordinating funding and data across Oregon’s public and private postsecondary landscape while noting limits to its governance authority.

The presentation walked the committee through three institutional sectors—local workforce boards, the 17 community colleges and the seven public universities—plus the private postsecondary sector. Cannon said HECC is “a coordinating board, not a governing board,” and described how the commission distributes state appropriations to institutions by formula and collects data the agency uses to drive policy and funding allocations.

The briefing included a status update on Future Ready Oregon, the 2022 legislative investment in workforce education and training. Julia (Giulia) Pontoni, director of the HECC Office of Workforce Investments, told the committee that Future Ready Oregon is a roughly $200 million package that the legislature charged the agency with administering. “Most of the HEC workforce funding is federal with all of the one-time Future Ready Oregon funding for this biennium coming from the American Rescue Plan Act,” Pontoni said. She said the HECC has obligated all Future Ready Oregon funds through grants and strategic initiatives that are designed to expand training and employment pathways, and the grant programs will sunset in 2026.

Pontoni summarized early…