California is home to the fifth-largest population of Black people in the United States, approximately 2.8 million individuals. However, when Black Californians seek access to the state's colleges and universities, they face undue bureaucratic and financial barriers. This Equity Alert explores a legislative proposal to create a California…

Because states typically fund districts based on student counts, districts reporting shrinking enrollment worry about shrinking dollars as well. The seemingly obvious quick fix is for states to hold districts financially harmless for some or all of their enrollment loss. But states have many factors to weigh when deciding whether or how to go down…

Over the last decade, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of online graduate degree programs. However, there are few informal opportunities for students online to connect with one another and learn about the field outside of their coursework. It is important to understand who these online graduate students are, as well as their…

The method California uses to count students for funding purposes is an important decision that drives both resources and behaviors. For more than 100 years, California has funded school districts based on the average number of students who attend school each day. Although this average daily attendance (ADA) method was once used by many states,…

Over the last decade the Bay Area region has witnessed a lack of diversity in Silicon Valley technology professions, a subject of current political and popular discourse. The California State University (CSU) system provides accessible higher education; the CSU system approach to accessible higher education affirms the distinctness of regions,…

The Latino population in the United States is large and growing. As a whole, however, it has been challenged with inequitable educational attainment rates compared to other groups, meriting the attention of public agencies, postsecondary institutions, and advocates. Latino economic and career success -- and the success of our overall economy --…

Dual enrollment, which provides opportunities for high school students to take college courses and earn college credit, is an important way to expand educational opportunities, improve economic mobility, and meet California's workforce needs. State leaders have recently increased support for dual enrollment, and the COVID-19 pandemic has fueled a…

Dual enrollment provides opportunities for high school students to take college courses and earn college credit. The COVID-19 pandemic has fueled a surge in participation across the country, and equity-centered legislation has raised dual enrollment's profile in California. Because California's public K-12 schools serve large shares of students…

Offering "Early Start" programs in the summer before students start their first year of college is one of the strategies that the California State University (CSU) system has used to support incoming students who may not be ready for college-level work in mathematics or written communication. In 2017, the CSU system began implementing a…

This report is part of a series focusing on studies intended to inform the California State University (CSU) system about the implementation of Executive Order 1110 (EO 1110). A major policy adopted by the CSU Chancellor's Office in 2017, EO 1110 requires CSU campuses to eliminate noncredit developmental courses -- often known as…

This dissertation includes three chapters focusing on policies directly related to improving college access and success. The first chapter focuses on lifetime eligibility of federal and state financial aid policies. The Pell Grant plays a critical role in helping students across the US to afford undergraduate education. In spite of its importance…

California's AB 705 required community colleges to implement changes that would maximize students' likelihood of starting and completing transfer-level (or degree-appropriate) coursework in English and math/quantitative reasoning within one year. Under the law, colleges must use high school information (e.g., GPA, coursework, and/or grades in…

This document contains the technical appendices for the report "Dual Enrollment in California: Promoting Equitable Student Access and Success." Appendices include: (1) Data and methods; and (2) Additional tables and figures. [This report was written with research support from Bonnie Brooks and Gabriel Gutierrez Aragon. For the full…

California's AB 705 required community colleges to implement changes that would maximize students' likelihood of starting and completing transfer-level (or degree-appropriate) coursework in English and math/quantitative reasoning within one year. Under the law, colleges must use high school information (e.g., GPA, coursework, and/or grades in…

This document contains the technical appendices for the report "Community College Math in California's New Era of Student Access." Appendices include: (1) Data; (2) Figures and Tables; (3) Qualitative Interview Analysis; (4) Interrupted Time Series Analysis; (5) Corequisite Remediation Analysis; and (6) What happened to students who…