Washington Student Achievement Council tells Senate committee Passport to Careers serves nearly 2,000 but funding hasn’t kept pace

Joel Anderson, associate director of legislative and external affairs at the Washington Student Achievement Council, told the Senate Higher Education and Workforce Development Committee that the Passport to Careers program is designed for youth who experienced foster care at age 13 or later or who experienced unaccompanied homelessness in the academic year before college enrollment. Anderson said the program will serve almost 2,000 students in the 2025–26 academic year and that the maximum award has been reduced to $2,000 for the current year, with an average award of about $1,900.

"We are the only state, to our knowledge, with data‑sharing agreements to identify these students automatically and enroll them in this program," Anderson said, describing the program’s state‑funded scholarship and campus support model and a public‑private partnership with the College…