“How Higher Education Funding Shortchanges Community Colleges,” a report released in May by The Century Foundation, says the greatest amount of money in higher education goes to the most affluent students and shortchanges community college students who, for the most part, come from low-income and working-class backgrounds. One of the report’s most discussed figures shows […]

Texas lawmakers have approved a budget that reduces funding for community colleges by 1.4 percent, leaving the state’s schools to make do with nearly $25 million less for the next two years. Steven Johnson, vice president of public affairs for the Texas Association of Community Colleges, says the state’s budget is disappointing — but it […]

A few years ago, with its 50th anniversary approaching, Miami Dade College undertook a comprehensive review of its student services. Shortly after that process began, the college received a Completion by Design grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “While the grant was nice, it was really more of a catalyst than the driving […]

Playing up the cost-efficiency and the potential boon to area economic development can help community colleges win state-government support for year-round funding. The North Carolina Community College System is using those selling points to promote new legislation that would expand a narrow list of courses that receive funding for summer as well as fall and […]

Last-dollar funding: When it comes to a free college education for America’s students, having a guaranteed stream of revenue is as important for the funding of such programs as it is for the students who benefit from them. “The message to community college presidents is last-dollar funding,” says Mike Krause, executive director of Tennessee Promise, […]

Community college students in Nevada who stop attending class and fail because of it — either because they’re academically underwater or because of a nonacademic reason, such as a new or better job — will collectively cost their campuses millions of dollars, according to a new funding formula implemented by the Nevada Board of Regents. […]

Colleges across the country continue to face budget cuts, but advocacy efforts can educate legislators on the effects the loss of important dollars can have. It’s a necessary move, because community colleges long ago cut the fat from their budgets, says David Baime, AACC’s senior vice president of government relations and research. Any further cuts […]

Flathead Valley Community College (FVCC), in Kalispell, Montana, discovered something extraordinary when conducting a 2012 study: Private donor money impacts student success more than Pell Grants alone. This was the first time the college had reached into the institutional research that revealed this important insight, ultimately leading to even more scholarship funding, according to Colleen […]

Bradley M. Gottfried, president of the College of Southern Maryland (CSM), regrets not finishing his associate degree before transferring to a four-year college. Because he left before completing two full years of community college, Gottfried ended up paying higher tuition for the credits he could have earned before transferring. He says it cost him thousands […]

Washington state’s Student Achievement Initiative is regarded as one of the nation’s most carefully designed performance-based funding systems for higher education. As with other such systems, Washington bases college and university funding on whether institutions meet certain state benchmarks, thereby creating a financial incentive for institutions to do so. Using information from the U.S. Department of Education’s […]