The Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) supports projects that are innovative and address a range of postsecondary education challenges. The FY26 appropriations bill funded seven FIPSE grant programs, and competitions are open. Several of these grant programs provide good opportunities for community colleges to support their students’ success. These programs include Postsecondary Student Succes Grant (PSSG) Program, ($45 million) Rural Postsecondary and Economic Development (RPED) Grant Program, ($45 million), Basic Needs for Postsecondary Students Program ($10 million), Centers of Excellence for Veteran Student Success (CEVSS) Program ($9 million), and Open Textbook Pilot (OTP) Program ($7 million). Each of these are due Tuesday, June 23 at 11:59 pm Eastern, except PSSG, which is due Tuesday, June 29.
A common theme this year among each of these grant programs is that they incentivize projects that support development of work-based learning opportunities and career readiness – which is a strength of community colleges. Several of the grant programs provide funding for colleges to develop or expand their Workforce Pell offerings.
The other common theme is that almost all of them incentivize partnership with a state higher education agency or workforce board. Whether it is for this year’s competitions, or for future ones, developing and strengthening these relationships will be critical for community colleges – both to increase the opportunities for federal funding to help your students and to enable the scaling of projects.
In several of the competitions, advancing artificial intelligence (AI) in education is also being incentivized and can be a good opportunity for community colleges to build on what they are starting to do to make sure AI is used to support both students and faculty in order to improve student outcomes.
For all of these competitions, applicants should carefully review the selection criteria, and clearly understand what is required, what is optional to gain competitive points, and what is being looked for in the framing of the projects so that community colleges have the best chances to be successful while ensuring the work aligns with the school’s mission and students’ needs. Colleges should also carefully review the performance measures so that projects can be designed to meet the program’s goals.
For more information, review the Notice Inviting Applications (NIAs) for each program and keep an eye out for pre-application webinar announcements and FAQ documents on the U.S. Department of Education’s program-specific website pages.
Amanda Fuchs Miller is the founder and President of Seventh Street Strategies and former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Education.
