Since the beginning of the Great Recession, many community colleges have experienced significant declines in state revenue, increases in enrollment, higher tuition, and flat or declining state student aid. These conditions have also occurred in an environment of heightened accountability with pressure to advance a student success agenda and to…

Outsourcing has evolved into a strategic imperative at a growing number of community colleges, especially as administrators rein in spending and streamline operations in the face of shrinking budgets. Across the country, more colleges are outsourcing a range of functions, including information technology (IT), course instruction, food service,…

An analysis of spending trends that is designed to discourage policy makers' focus on finding new revenue rather than reining in spending suggests that the model for financing colleges has reinforced educational inequities and failed to increase the rate at which students graduate. According to the analysis, "serious fault lines" in the current…

College and university foundations are essentially idiosyncratic, reflecting the peculiarities of individual institutional cultures, state and system contexts, and financial and political circumstances. This diversity is perhaps even greater among community colleges that tend to be more closely governed by regional and community influences. The…

In this article we introduce and explain a funding framework for advancing an equity agenda at the community college. The need for the framework is premised on (a) Dowd's observation that the traditional community college commitment to student access no longer suffices as an adequate strategy to achieve greater equity in society and (b) the…

As a faculty member/administrator at a community college for more than 40 years, the author has seen first hand the role that education can play in transforming lives. He also can see that low tuition, the main pillar of their policy of open access, is giving way in the face of declining state and local support. This certainly is a form of…