There’s a $78 billion revenue gap between community colleges and four-year institutions, according to a recent report by the Center for American Progress, a left-wing think tank. The study found that community colleges receive $8,800 less in revenue per student enrolled compared to four-year colleges.
And that’s a conservative estimate, said the report’s author, Victoria Yuen, a Center for American Progress policy analyst for postsecondary education.
That whopping figure doesn’t include what four-year institutions receive in federal research funding, and its per-student numbers treat part-time students as a fraction of a full-time student, when they may actually need more resources.
“The students that attend community colleges are typically lower income, they’re the first in their family to go to college or they’re working adults,” Yuen said. “So, they need stronger support services. There’s strong research that ties support services to better outcomes, like graduation and retention outcomes.”
The report focuses on differences in grants and scholarships, state funding, local appropriations and tuition revenue. Its findings have policy implications as the presidential election draws closer.
On average, community colleges receive more in local appropriations than their four-year counterparts, but that doesn’t make a significant dent in other funding disparities. State appropriations account for $31.3 billion of the total revenue gap, with all states except for four putting more funding toward four-year institutions – approximately $3,700 more per full-time equivalent enrollment. Grants and scholarships make up a smaller percentage of the gap at $2.9 billion, while tuition dollars account for the bulk of it at $55.5 billion.
Community colleges intentionally keep tuition costs low – it’s a part of their mission – but the disparity in tuition revenue is valuable for lawmakers to know, Yuen said. For colleges, tuition is one of the main revenue streams that “goes directly back into educational spending.” So, the size of that difference “makes a stronger argument for having state, federal and local government appropriations cover some of these gaps that stem from tuition.”
