To help the nation respond to the pandemic, Congress injected about $4.6 trillion into the U.S. economy through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act and subsequent legislation. Of this amount, over $75 billion was directed to institutions of higher education through the Higher Education Emergency Relief (HEER) Fund, including nearly $25 billion to community colleges. Using data from the U.S. Department of Education’s Education Stabilization Fund Transparency Portal and the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, this ARCC Network report examines how HEER funds were distributed to community colleges and the extent to which the colleges spent those funds. It also explores how HEER funding and spending patterns differed by institutional and student characteristics.
HEER funding was based mostly on particular kinds of enrollments: States and community colleges with higher enrollments received more funds, and those with higher percentages of Pell recipients and full-time students tended to receive larger awards. The majority of HEER funds were intended to aid in the transition to distance learning, support faculty and staff training, and maintain core instruction and services at colleges. A substantial portion of HEER funding also went to students in the form of emergency aid, and some colleges received “other” HEER funding based on institutional characteristics to address additional unmet needs.
Community colleges spent nearly all the HEER funding they received: Collectively, 976 community colleges spent 95% of funds, and nearly half the colleges (484) spent virtually all of their HEER funds. Colleges that spent less of their HEER funding tended to have received larger per-student awards.
A Tableau dashboard released in October 2023 accompanies this report and allows users to analyze HEER funding and spending at community colleges across the country by state, by institution, a by various institutional and student characteristics.
