We are pleased to announce that the Carnegie Corporation of New York has renewed its support of the National College Attainment Network (NCAN) with a $500,000 grant through October 2024. The Corporation’s
Pathways to Postsecondary Success Program invests in reimagined pathways to educational and economic opportunity for high school graduates. The program includes initiatives to improve college access and completion, particularly for low-income and
first-generation students, as well as efforts to better align K-12 learning, higher education, and careers.
The Carnegie Corporation provides unrestricted funding to underwrite NCAN’s high-priority member services, allowing dues to remain
low and increasing participation from a diverse group of organizations across the country. Services include NCAN’s professional development, networking, and capacity-building efforts. This work is the cornerstone of NCAN, allowing thousands of individuals
around the country to learn together how to help more students, more effectively. Without our members and their expertise, NCAN could be neither a persuasive policy advocate nor a credible proponent of systems change.
Farhad Asghar, the
Corporation’s Program Officer for Pathways to Postsecondary Success, said, “It is important to us to support NCAN’s immediate and top-priority needs. Only NCAN brings together the many types of organizations across sectors that share a commitment
to increasing equity in postsecondary enrollment, persistence, completion, and career success. This network is a bold and creative group that is showing what students can achieve when we realign programs, schools, and institutions to better support
them.”
“At our recent national conference, I was powerfully reminded that NCAN’s members are the foundation of all our work,” NCAN CEO Kim Cook said. “Seeing all those student advocates together, enthusiastically sharing their latest
challenges and strategies, you could feel progress happening. And it is the knowledge, dedication, and connections of our members that NCAN leverages to pursue our federal and state policy agenda and find strategic opportunities to improve postsecondary
transitions with K-12 systems. We thank the Carnegie Corporation of New York for helping to make this network a vital collaboration.”
NCAN’s member services include our news blog, weekly e-newsletter, and daily social media updates; online
resources including the FAFSA Tracker; two to four professional development webinars each month; an e-learning platform with 30 regularly updated units; major learning and networking events such as our national conference and spring institute; and
a biennial benchmarking project to document member outcomes for students.
Post-pandemic, there is much work to do to reengage students in postsecondary study and rebuild a far stronger high school to postsecondary pipeline. Additionally,
the pandemic has brought new importance to several topics that our field must address urgently and intentionally, including mental health and wellness; diversity, equity, and inclusion in our organizations; equitable use of standardized college admissions
testing; improving early career outcomes for students; and growing interest in shorter postsecondary pathways with living-wage potential.
For all these capacity-building topics and ones we have not yet foreseen, NCAN is well positioned
to spot new challenges, identify effective responses, and share them widely so more students will benefit. We can quickly tap our diverse network of members, partners, and friends to provide information, tools, and adapted program models. We help
members learn fast from early adopters, increase their use of effective tools, limit reinvention of the wheel, and find new partners for collaboration. Our goal is to help members consolidate the positive changes of the last few years and learn from
and with one another about how best to meet the needs of today’s students.
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