James Dean Ward and William G. Tierney: Brown’s plan for community colleges will harm disadvantaged students

California’s lawmakers reached an agreement on education funding last Friday, and a key part of the deal is a plan to tie the state funding community colleges receive to measures of student success. In this op-ed, Pullias research assistant James Dean Ward and Pullias co-director William G. Tierney make an urgent argument against the funding changes.
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In his State of the State address, Governor Jerry Brown bragged California community colleges will get an extra $2.4 billion annually. Ironically, this extra money is likely to short shrift our most disadvantaged students, given the strings Brown has attached to these state funds.

Brown’s proposal, on the surface, sounds like a good idea. Basically, the Governor wants to change how community colleges are funded, to better reward those schools that are helping students succeed. His proposal: Fund each college based on the number of degrees awarded instead of the number of students served, as is currently done. This way, community colleges will be spurred to move students more speedily towards their education and career goals.

To be fair, California’s community colleges do suffer from anemic completion and transfer rates. As of 2017, fewer than half of students entering a community college transfer or earn a credential after six years. This is a troubling statistic considering today’s labor market, which all but requires higher education for a decent standard of living. According to the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce, more than 10 million working age Californians lack a postsecondary credential, yet fewer than 3 million “good jobs”—jobs that pay at least $35,000 a year—exist in the state for workers with a high school diploma or less.

This mismatch between citizens’ education and the labor market’s needs leaves many Californians behind, especially low-income individuals who, on average, have less education. Brown’s budget attempts to close that gap by rewarding schools that produce degree-earning students.

Yet as researchers in the higher education field, we know the Governor’s proposed solution would produce new problems—problems that hurt most the very students it intends to help.

What’s wrong with rewarding an institution that has successful outcomes? Well, schools would be incentivized to start redefining what, exactly, “successful outcomes” are in order to game the system. In our work, we’ve found that proposals like Brown’s—better known among education researchers as performance-based funding policies—incentivize schools to pick students who will succeed and take the easier path to improved outcomes. It’s a lot easier to corral students into quick and easy certificate programs to artificially ramp up completion rates than it is to support them through associate degree programs that may be more challenging and time-consuming, yet also ultimately more financially rewarding.

Even worse, some colleges have been incentivized to break down the pipeline from disadvantaged high schools to community colleges. After all, why would a community college go out of its way to court a student population that’s likely to drive down its graduation rates—and as a result, its funding? Although using “bonus” funding to encourage colleges to enroll disadvantaged students – as the Governor’s budget does and the Legislative Analyst’s Office suggests enhancing – can help mitigate these deleterious effects, performance-based funding has not been effective at increasing overall student attainment.

Brown’s proposal jeopardizes a college’s funding and demands of its leaders cold, bottom line-based decision-making, which is antithetical to the mission of public institutions that exist to serve the state and its citizens. California’s leaders should instead consider the lessons learned from other states’ postsecondary policies, and avoid known pitfalls. A switch from enrollment- to performance-based funding puts the focus on outcomes rather than the process of educating students—and our research shows that’s a mistake. The Governor is right in recognizing we need to help foster opportunities for our most disadvantaged students. His funding proposal, however, does quite the opposite.
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James Dean Ward is a research assistant and Ph.D. Candidate in the Pullias Center for Higher Education, which William G. Tierney co-directs as a University Professor at the University of Southern California.