CPE asks lawmakers for Futurity funding and workforce grants after presenting Summer Bridge outcomes

Travis Powell, executive vice president and general counsel for the Council on Postsecondary Education (CPE), and Amanda Ellis, senior vice president for student access and success, presented CPE’s budget, platform work and workforce requests to the committee.

Amanda Ellis described Futurity (FutureFinder) as a Kentucky‑specific online hub that aggregates career profiles, wages by region, institutional program outcomes and scholarship listings. "We hit 96 percent of the counties" in early use and the site has approached 25,000 visits since launch, Ellis said, and CPE requested $250,000 per year for continued development and outreach to reach adult learners and rural areas.

CPE also presented evaluation results for Summer Bridge programs, which used pandemic‑era funds to reduce "summer melt" for underprepared and underrepresented students. CPE reported that more than half of the Summer Bridge programs showed improved fall‑to‑fall persistence and that, in the institutions studied, improved persistence generated an estimated $315,000 in additional tuition in students' second year. CPE said $750,000 a year would not fully cover program costs but would help sustain and expand the work.

Leslie Brown, CPE assistant vice president for operations, summarized the agency’s current budget structure ($33.5 million in stewarded funds across state, federal, trust and private grants) and noted that some federal grants, including GEAR UP, face uncertainty in renewal but that Kentucky has strong longitudinal data capacity to support applications and evaluation.

Committee members asked how Futurity would link students to actual employer openings and whether employers could provide outcome data. CPE said it is working with employers to link job postings and employer pipelines to the platform and described plans to pursue outcome and placement metrics where feasible.

CPE also outlined workforce alignment requests: additional staff to coordinate higher education with employers, grant seed money for campus programs in manufacturing/logistics and healthcare, a proposed faculty development center, and a graduate profile fellows program to embed essential employability skills across curricula.

CPE representatives said many employer partners have provided funding and that a recently created health care workforce investment fund provided $10 million over the biennium ($7M/$3M) with dollar‑for‑dollar matching to support scholarships and infrastructure; CPE characterized the matched funding model as successful for leveraging private investments.

CPE said it will include these requests in its consolidated budget submission and will follow up with committees on data about dual credit matriculation and Futurity analytics as members requested.