The largest system of higher education in the nation, the California Community Colleges (CCC) has disappeared more than one million students in the past 15 years, a 35% decrease in its student body since 2008 despite California's population increase. This dramatic shrinking of the CCC system was not an accident. It was manufactured by a vast…

Community colleges educate nearly 50% of students who complete a degree at a four-year university. Yet, California community college funding remains lower than per student funding for the UC, CSU, and K-12 systems. Community college non-profit 501(c)3 foundations provide the opportunity to generate millions in support of their colleges, and yet…

Background/Context: The business and philanthropic sectors have been a persistent force in shaping U.S. schools. Recently, they have used their resources to advance policies that embody newer principles of industry--reforms that suggest that competition, choice, and deregulation can spur improvement and effectiveness. This has most notably…

Do donor-driven scholarship funds meet the needs of students? Do they advance equity in college attainment? In numerous instances, the answer to both questions is "no." Scholarship funds housed at community foundations often have complex, merit-based selection criteria and use evaluation methods that are exclusionary or do not recognize…

In 2015, College Futures Foundation launched the Community Philanthropy for Student Success Initiative (CPI) to engage a cohort of community foundations across California as partners and leaders in reducing statewide disparities in college completion rates. Through CPI, College Futures endeavored to build the capacity of participating foundations…

Despite clear evidence of the benefits of taking advanced math courses in high school, access to and success in these courses are not experienced equally. Only about half of California high school seniors enroll in an advanced math course, and nearly one-quarter of seniors do not take any math. To increase equitable access to advanced math, six…

In April 2021, New America's Open Technology Institute (OTI) and the Philanthropication thru Privatization Project (PtP) released a joint proposal that the federal government should invest a substantial portion of the windfall proceeds from future auctions of public airwaves (spectrum) to seed a new Digital Equity Foundation dedicated to…