What’s excellent about your community college and makes it the right choice for students, the community, or employers? The answer could be worth $50,000.

The effort is part of a new funding opportunity from Lumina Foundation to help schools enhance their digital outreach and marketing efforts. Official rules and guidelines can be found here.

Heather Jarvis, 32, is part of the fastest-growing prison population in the country, one of more than 190,000 women held in some form of confinement in the United States as of this year. Their numbers grew by more than 500 percent between 1980 and 2021, more than twice the growth rate for men, according to a report by The Sentencing Project.

Yet, programs aimed at helping women stay out of prison once they’re released have not grown at nearly the same pace. That makes the journey harder for women, who confront different challenges than their male counterparts.

Russell Lowery-Hart, chancellor of the Austin Community College District, believes colleges and universities have been asking students to mortgage their future—to take on big loan debt. And they’re not enrolling because they can’t afford it or they don’t see the return on investment. 

Lowery-Hart thinks there is a better way. This fall, his beliefs will be put to the test with the launch of a new program to make college tuition free for everyone.