Racial Equity in State Funding for Community Colleges

ABSTRACT

States vary significantly in both the amount of funding they allocate to community colleges and the mechanisms they use to distribute these funds (Kelchen et al., 2024; Mullin et al., 2015; State Higher Education Executive Officers, 2025). One major source of variation in state's approaches to funding community colleges is whether and how they incorporate race considerations in their funding models. For example, some states include weights for enrolling or graduating students with certain racial categorizations (Gándara et al., 2026). Including race‐based adjustments in funding models is one way to address the “education debt” owed to racially minoritized communities that has resulted from ideas, ideologies, and actions that have marginalized or otherwise harmed these communities (Ladson‐Billings, 2006, p. 5). Estela Bensimon (2007) developed the concept of equity mindedness to assess racialized assumptions about historically minoritized people . As Bensimon (2020), building on Ladson Billings (2006) and Kendi (2019), argues, addressing education debt requires anti‐racist policy, which includes naming race in policy. However, prior research documents legislators’ aversion to overtly addressing race in funding models for higher education institutions (Gándara, 2020), a reluctance that may be intensifying amid the current “anti‐DEI” climate (Briscoe et al., 2025; Lewis & Muñiz, 2024). In this context, this descriptive study addresses the questions: How do states incorporate race considerations in their funding models for community colleges? What patterns emerge in the consideration of race in funding models for community colleges in recent years? By assessing the extent to which state funding policies incorporate race‐related components, this study identifies both gaps and opportunities for addressing racialized inequities through community college finance policy. It provides examples for equity‐minded policymakers and advocates of what is missing from current funding models and what is possible in designing models that more directly advance racial equity.