Two new initiatives under the Future Ready Iowa program experienced mixed results as they were rolled out for the first time during the fall 2019 semester. One, the Last-Dollar Scholarship program, has had a high takeup rate among students and may be expanded. Another, the Future Ready Iowa Grant program, had apparent difficulty in find participants and will be allowed to end after its initial funding has been distributed. 

More than $6.8 million — or just over half of the $13 million budgeted for 2019-2020 — in Last-Dollar Scholarships have already been awarded to more than 6,000 Iowa students at 17 colleges across the state this past fall, according to data provided by Iowa College Aid.  The average scholarship award was $1,130. As Gov. Kim Reynolds noted in her Condition of the State address last month, nearly 80% of those students are adult learners.  

Reynolds is seeking an increase of $2.8 million for the scholarship program, to $15.8 million. The increase is part of a total request of $19.98 million in additional funding for the Future Ready Iowa Act in Fiscal Year 2020 plus another $12.05 million in Fiscal Year 2021. 

In the same budget request, however, Reynolds has zeroed out the amount for the Future Ready Iowa Grant program, which had gotten $1 million in funding.

The reason: Less than $33,000 of that $1 million has been awarded so far in grants, with grants to 24 students at nine institutions. The program provides stipends to Iowans who left college after earning at least half the credits toward a four-year degree in a high-demand field, and who return to complete a degree.

“You can imagine how hard it was to find people who had been out of school [for the grants] versus people who were already enrolled and in the pipeline [for the Last-Dollar Scholarships],” said Elizabeth Keest Sedrel, communications coordinator with Iowa College Aid. Additionally, the initial appropriations — $13 million for the scholarship versus $1 million for the grant program — indicates that lawmakers already recognized which would be the more popular program, she said. 

Iowa College Aid anticipates having no problem distributing all of the Last-Dollar Scholarship funds, Sedrel said. At the same time, the remainder of the $1 million for the less-popular grants program will be able to roll over to future fiscal years until it’s used up, she said.