Community College finance is a complex topic, made more so by a number of changes in recent years to the way California funds its 116 colleges. Wheelhouse Research Fellow Robbie Linden has broken the complexity down in a go-to primer, Understanding the Student-Centered Funding Formula. This resource is designed to provide policymakers, practitioners and anyone who cares about community colleges a detailed understanding of how the formula works. It also explains how the SCFF relates to the formulas that came before it, and how its implementation was adapted under the urgent circumstances of the pandemic. Download the brief.

Building on this work, Funding Incentives for CCCs: Impacts of the SCFF on Financial Aid Receipt is the first look at whether the SCFF succeeded in increasing student financial aid take-up. The quick answer is yes, but our analysis suggests this might be due more to strong messaging around the need to serve more aid-eligible students that accompanied early implementation of the formula, rather than the formula’s financial incentives themselves. Download the brief.