Many young people leaving foster care strive to earn a college degree but need support to do so. The Chafee Education and Training Voucher (ETV) program offers young people currently or formerly in foster care financial supports to pursue postsecondary education or vocational training. Through the ETV program, students may receive annual vouchers, with the amount based on their cost of attendance.
Historically, these vouchers have been awarded with a cap of $5,000 a year, but the Supporting Foster Youth and Families through the Pandemic Act (H.R. 7947, 116th Cong., 2nd Sess.), passed in December 2020, increased the maximum annual voucher amount to $12,000 from October 2021 through September 2022. The program has been authorized since 2001. However, policymakers know little about the young people who receive these vouchers, where and how the vouchers are used, or the educational outcomes of voucher recipients.
To fill these gaps in our knowledge, researchers from the Urban Institute linked data on ETV receipt to National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) college enrollment and graduation data for eligible young people in 10 states. These young people would be eligible for ETVs based on their foster care placement history.
These fact sheets provide information about the annual number of ETV awards and their dollar amounts, characteristics of ETV recipients and their chosen schools, and preliminary statistics on postsecondary education participation for those 10 states’ ETV programs. A more extensive analysis of the ETV program can be found in Urban’s report: Do Education and Training Vouchers Make a Difference for Young Adults in Foster Care? A Study of Ten States. These publications are part of a broader evaluation of the ETV programs. For more information, please visit our ETV project page.
Data and Methodology
This analysis uses data from three main sources:
- child welfare placement data for young people who were in out-of-home placements at or after age 16
- NSC data on enrollment and graduation for these young people
- data on ETV receipt and use
This analysis is descriptive, and statistics presented here should not be interpreted as program impacts. It is part of a broader evaluation of the ETV programs in California, Colorado, Illinois, Florida, Missouri, New Jersey, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee.
Young people are eligible for a voucher if their foster care history (including age at discharge, discharge type, and length of stay in foster care placement) and age at college enrollment align with their state’s ETV eligibility criteria. Other unobservable factors, such as the cost of attendance for the school they are enrolled in and the amount of financial aid they receive, may also impact a youth’s eligibility because ETVs are applied only after other financial aid (e.g., Pell grants, scholarships) is applied to the cost of attendance.
This analysis is limited to young people who were eligible for vouchers. It compares three groups of eligible young people: (1) those who attended college and received an ETV, (2) those who attended college but did not receive an ETV, and (3) those who did not receive an ETV and did not attend college. Comparing these three groups can help policymakers identify both successes and gaps in ETV targeting and outreach to young people.
This analysis reflects the ETV program before the 2018 Family First Prevention Services Act (FFPSA) extended eligibility for ETV to age 26 and before the Supporting Foster Youth and Families through the Pandemic Act temporarily increased the maximum ETV award amount from $5,000 up to $12,000 per youth each year.