The Century Foundation’s Working Group on Community College Financial Resources has a report titled "Recommendations for Providing Community Colleges with the Resources They Need."
- Two-year colleges are meant to be America’s quintessential institutions for the aspiring middle class. But at America’s 1,000 community colleges, only 38 percent of entering students complete a degree or certificate within six years.
- The majority of community college students come from the bottom half of the socioeconomic distribution and bring with them significant educational needs. Yet, private research universities, educating a more affluent population, spend three times as much per student as community colleges on non-research educational functions, and public research universities spend 60 percent more.
- Given strong evidence that greater spending increases outcomes for students, states should boost funding for community colleges and federal policymakers should create a new federal–state partnership to further support two-year institutions.
- Policymakers and foundations should fund research to answer a basic question: What level of funding could produce adequate community college education outcomes—increasing the likelihood of students beginning and completing two-year programs and going on to earn a middle-class wage? Such funding studies are commonplace at the K–12 level, and similar community college research could improve decisions about where, and how much, to invest in community colleges..
