The Colorado Opportunity Scholarship Initiative (COSI) provides qualifying Colorado students with scholarship awards and wraparound supports to aid them in their pursuit of a college degree.

Students who attend a public institution and have family income of $90,000 or less are potentially eligible for a tax reimbursement of any out-of-pocket tuition and fees paid for the first 65 credits of their education. The program expands on individual front-end institutional promise programs and extends financial support to middle income Colorado residents.

Many colleges and universities have promise programs, which help remove financial barriers connected with continuing education after high school. The programs cover the cost of tuition up-front for eligible students and some cover more. Eligibility depends on each college or university’s specific eligibility requirements.

The Hunger Free and Healthy Minds checklists under the Social Determinants of Student Success aim to improve the health and academic success of students by ensuring that schools have the resources they need to help end hunger and promote mental health services and resources. CDHE's Career Connected Campus designation falls under the Workforce Determinants of Student Success which emphasizes career preparation. The designation recognizes Colorado’s institutions of higher education that set a high standard for how their campus engages in practices that prepare students for employment commensurate with their postsecondary credential and supports alumni with employment resources that secure work commensurate with their academic credential post-completion.

FosterEd provides free cost of attendance at all public higher education institutions for Colorado resident students who have been in foster care or, following an adjudication as neglected or dependent, in noncertified kinship care in Colorado at any time on or after reaching the age of 13.

EmpowerEd provides free cost of attendance at all public higher education institutions for Colorado resident students who experienced homelessness and were identified as being McKinney-Vento eligible by designated school personnel while enrolled in a Colorado high school.

The ETV program is a federally funded program administered by CDHE to provide Colorado residents who are currently or have previously been in foster care and are between the ages of 17 to 25 with financial support for postsecondary education at a college, university, vocational, technical, or trade school.

The OER grant program is in its sixth year. To date, grantees have collaborated to save Colorado students more than $42.1 million on textbook costs and transformed over 1,900 courses to no-cost by creating, adapting, and adopting free openly licensed educational resources at campuses across the state.

The Colorado Re-Engaged (CORE) Initiative enables four-year institutions of higher education to award an earned associate degree to eligible students who have stopped-out from a baccalaureate program after earning at least 70 credit hours. CORE can enable degree recipients to obtain higher paying jobs and more secure employment, strengthen the state’s workforce and support economic recovery and better position degree recipients to return to higher education to complete a bachelor’s degree or higher.

The Path4Ward program allows early high school graduates in participating districts from low-income households to receive funding for postsecondary education or training programs during what would have been their fourth year of high school.