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Assessing Community College Programs at State Prisons


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[PDF] The 2016-17 Budget: Higher Education Analysis

February 26, 2016 - In this report, we provide background on three key areas of higher education in California: enrollment, tuition and financial aid, and institutional performance. We then analyze specific budget proposals for the University of California, California State University, California Community Colleges, Hastings College of the Law, and California Student Aid Commission, making corresponding recommendations for the Legislature's consideration.

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The Master Plan at 50: Using Distance Education to Increase College Access and Efficiency

October 25, 2010 - While distance education is not—and is not intended to be—suitable for everyone (students as well as faculty), we find that it offers an important alternative means of providing instruction that can complement existing formats and expand options for the state’s students and segments. In order to take fuller advantage of this potential, we believe that the Legislature should guide a clearer statewide vision that specifies data which the segments should collect and report on distance–education students, and which clarifies expectations concerning intercampus collaborations and other partnerships. To that end, we make a number of recommendations.

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[PDF] Overview of Community College Basic Skills Programs

February 5, 2016 - Presented to: Assembly Budget Subcommittee No. 2 on Education Finance

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[PDF] Final Evaluation of Community College Bachelor’s Degree Pilot

January 24, 2020 - State law authorizes the California Community Colleges (CCC) to award associate degrees, generally limiting the awarding of more advanced degrees to the state’s universities. As an exception to this rule, Chapter 747 of 2014 (SB 850, Block) authorized CCC to offer bachelor’s degrees on a pilot basis at up to 15 community colleges. Chapter 747 directed our office to conduct an interim evaluation of the pilot by July 1, 2018 and a final evaluation by July 1, 2022. This report reflects our final evaluation.

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[PDF] The 2013-14 Budget: Analysis of the Higher Education Budget

February 12, 2013 - In the 2013-14 Governor's Budget Summary, the Governor expresses major concerns about higher education in California. Most notably, the Governor is concerned about escalating higher education costs, funding models that promote neither efficiency nor effectiveness, and generally poor student outcomes. To address these issues, the Governor lays out a multiyear budget plan. The main component of the plan is large annual unallocated base increases for all three higher education segments. The Governor loosely links these base increases with an expectation the segments improve their performance. Although we believe the Governor’s budget plan has drawn attention to some notable problems, we have serious concerns with several of his specific budget proposals. By providing the segments with large unallocated increases only vaguely connected to undefined performance expectations, the Governor cedes substantial state responsibilities to the segments and takes key higher education decisions out of the Legislature’s control. We recommend the Legislature take a different approach and allocate any new funding first for the state’s highest existing education priorities, including debt service, pension costs, and paying down community college deferrals. If more funding is provided, then we recommend the Legislature link the additional funding with explicit enrollment and performance expectations.

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The 2021-22 Budget: California Community Colleges

February 16, 2021 - This report analyzes the Governor’s major budget proposals for the community colleges, covering base apportionments, enrollment, students’ basic needs, online tools, apprenticeships and work-based learning, instructional materials, and faculty professional development.

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[PDF] California Public Higher Education: Funding Supplemental Services for Low-Income and First-Generation Students

December 20, 2017 - The Supplemental Report of the 2017-18 Budget Act required our office to examine how much existing funding and support is provided to these students and identify options for increasing that funding and support. This report fulfills this requirement.

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California Community Colleges: A Progress Report on the Student Success Act of 2012

July 1, 2014 - The Legislature passed the Student Success Act of 2012 in an effort to improve student outcomes at the California Community Colleges (CCC). Since enactment, community colleges have made a number of changes designed to enhance support services for students. Though development and implementation of these changes still are in their early stages, overall we believe CCC is making changes consistent with the act and is on the right track. While the system is well underway in implementing the various provisions of the act, we believe the system has additional work to do in addressing other complementary priorities, particularly in the areas of course alignment, basic skills, and professional development.

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Improving Workforce Education and Training Data in California

August 18, 2016 - In 2016-17, eight state agencies are receiving more than $6 billion in state and federal funding to administer almost 30 workforce education and training programs. Historically, state and federal laws have required service providers to report different types of outcome information even for similar workforce programs, making comparing programs and assessing the overall system's performance difficult. In addition, to collect information about program participants’ longer-term outcomes, state agencies often must share and link data with one another. Currently, the state's method for linking data is inefficient and administratively burdensome. To address these concerns, we recommend the Legislature direct the California Workforce Development Board to determine a set of common outcome measures for workforce programs and require programs to collect and report data for those measures. We also recommend the Legislature replace the state’s existing method of linking data with a streamlined, systemwide method. To increase the value of workforce data, we further recommend the board present the data in a few workforce reports each year, with the intent of informing policy makers’ policy and funding decisions and improving the overall quality of the state’s workforce system.

Correction (8/18/16): CalWORKs employment and training services funding levels corrected in Figure 1.

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Back to Basics: Improving College Readiness of Community College Students

June 16, 2008 - Most students who enter California Community Colleges (CCC) lack sufficient reading, writing, and mathematics skills to undertake college–level work. Thus, one of the CCC system’s core missions is to provide precollegiate “basic skills” instruction to these students. In this report, we find that a large percentage of students do not overcome their basic skills deficiencies during their time at CCC. We identify a number of state policies that we believe stand in the way of student success, and recommend several structural and systemwide changes designed to help increase preparedness and achievement among community college students.

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[PDF] California Community Colleges: Evaluation of Intersession Extension Pilot Program

December 14, 2016 - During the state's last fiscal downturn, reductions to community college funding resulted in many students being unable to access taxpayer-subsidized courses. As a response, the state enacted Chapter 710 of 2013 (AB 955, Williams), which permitted select colleges to offer, on a pilot basis, fully fee-supported credit-bearing courses during winter and summer intersessions. Long Beach City College (LBCC)—the sole participant in the pilot—offered eight Chapter 710 courses in 2014, enrolling nearly 200 students. Our review finds that students who took these courses generally mirrored the broader LBCC student population. We also find that student outcomes for these courses were comparable to or better than outcomes for taxpayer-subsidized courses. Although the pilot was small, the results suggest that fully fee-supported intersession programs could serve as one viable means for colleges to maintain or expand access during tight budget times. Based on these encouraging results, we recommend the Legislature extend Chapter 710's sunset date and open up the program to any community college that meets specified criteria.

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The 2022-23 Budget: College and Career Proposals

February 23, 2022 - In his January budget, the Governor proposes $2 billion in one-time funding across three programs to increase college and career readiness among high school students. In this post, we provide background on the state’s programs, describe and assess the Governor’s proposals, and provide our recommendations to the Legislature.

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The 2016-17 Budget: Assessing the Governor’s Zero-Textbook-Cost Proposal

March 14, 2016 - This brief is intended to assist the Legislature in reviewing the Governor’s proposal for zero-textbook-cost degrees. We provide background on open educational resources (OER), describe California efforts to encourage their use, and highlight zero–textbook–cost degree initiatives currently underway in other states. We then describe the Governor’s proposal and provide our associated assessment and recommendations.