Consumer Disclosures and Budget
As a member of the California Community Colleges system, information about Calbright’s student body, budget, and operations are public information. This page will be updated at least quarterly to provide current facts and figures regarding student enrollment and demographics and annually with the College’s budget.
Consumer Disclosures
Calbright College was created to serve adult learners across the state. We are the only community college in California that offers a competency-based model for education in a 100% online medium.
Our student body reflects our mission, and continues to grow after we opened our doors in October 2019. As of the end of November 2022, Calbright has a student body of 1,561 learners, who represent 44 counties across the state. More than 90% of Calbright students are 25+ years old, many who are returning to formal education in order to learn new skills and transition to a different career, be more competitive in their current field, and/or to grow their current skill set to grow alongside a rapidly evolving economy.
Our non-traditional academic calendar means students can enroll and begin immediately, any time of year!
Student Enrollment and Demographics
We’re growing quickly! Nearly 90% of Calbright students cite our unique model as the reason their program was accessible. Our flexibly paced curriculum allows students to move forward based on mastery of a topic, not hours spent in a classroom, and prepare adult learners to earn industry-valued certificates employers are looking for. More than a third (34%) of our students are parents/caregivers, and the ability to move as quickly as one would like, while taking the time they need, is essential for Californians who are working and raising a family, juggling multiple jobs, or managing the stress and uncertainty of unemployment and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Some of Calbright’s student body demographics, as of October 31, 2022:
- 48% of our students are ages 25-39 and 43.4% are 40 or older
- Median age is late 30s
- 47.6% are male, 46.3% female, 1.5%. non-binary, and 4.6% decline to state
- 13.1% identify as Asian, 23.7% as Back or African American, 30.8% as Latinx, 35.5% as white, and 6.5% as Native American/Alaskan/Hawaiian
More information is available in Calbright’s annual Milestone Report, as well as in our most recent enrollment report.
In our annual Student Experience Survey, which is conducted each spring, we found that 79% of students reported that they were satisfied or very satisfied with what they had learned in their programs, 76% were satisfied with their overall experience at Calbright, and 90.4% of students would recommend Calbright to someone else.
Read about some of our students and their stories.
Our founding legislation calls for Calbright to launch through a seven-year start-up period. This provides an opportunity for us to build a new kind of college from the ground up. During our start-up period, which concludes in 2026, we’ll have limited and/or preliminary data regarding student success and will continue to update this space as new information and learnings are available.
We have a non-traditional academic calendar, which allows students to enroll immediately, but it also means we don’t have traditional semesters that many community colleges use to measure student progress and success. To address this, we place students into cohorts by the quarter in which they enrolled. For example, students who enrolled in October, November, or December of 2021 would be in the same cohort.
Like many institutions in the California Community Colleges system, we use a three year period to generate completion rates. As of November 30, 2022, Calbright has not been open for a full three years following its earliest enrollments, and so any completion rate is preliminary, based on a limited number of students, and only reflects the College’s earliest days of operations. Of the students who enrolled at Calbright in October and November of 2019, 10.6% have completed their program.
For comparison, this preliminary completion rate is more than double the California Community Colleges system’s completion rate for Chancellor’s Office Approved Certificates (statewide data source). Across the system, 4% of first-time students who enrolled during the 2019-2020 academic year earned their certificate within three years. The system’s associate’s degree completion rate for first-time students during this same period is 5%.
Further, the system’s completion rates for non-traditional adult learners highlight the importance of Calbright’s role as the leading edge of the learning curve for identifying support systems for these working adults. Students who were 25 years old and older who enrolled in the California Community Colleges system for the first time during the 2019-2020 academic year had a 3% three-year completion rate for Chancellor’s Office Approved Certificates. For associate’s degrees, the completion rate is less than 2%.
Calbright’s overall persistence rate is 94.8%. Persistence is measured as the percentage of students who, upon finishing a six-month term, either completed the program or enrolled in a subsequent six-month term.
Budget
Calbright’s Board of Trustees, as well as State and California Community Colleges system policies, require that each annual budget meet the following criteria:
- The annual budget shall support the College’s strategic priorities.
- Assumptions upon which the budget is based are presented to the Board for review.
- A schedule is provided to the Board by March of each year that includes dates for presentation of the tentative budget, required public hearing, Board study sessions, and approval of the final budget. At the public hearing, interested persons may appear and address the Board regarding the proposed budget or any item in the proposed budget.
- Unrestricted general reserves shall be no less than five percent (5%) of the general fund.
- Changes in the assumptions upon which the budget was based shall be reported to the Board in a timely manner.
- Budget projections address long-term goals and commitments.
Timeline
Each budget’s timeline for the following year is developed by March. Calbright’s administration produces a tentative budget for the Board of Trustees to review each June. Board study sessions and development of the budget, including public hearings, then occur from July-August, with a completed budget voted upon and sent to the Chancellor of the California Community Colleges in September.
After the budget is approved, the Chief Executive Officer/President (or designee) shall make quarterly periodic reports to the Board and shall keep the Board fully advised regarding the financial status of the College, including a mid-year report showing the financial and budgetary condition of the College.
Previous Budgets
Calbright College was established by the State of California in June, 2018, and its first annual budget was for fiscal year 2020. Below are current and past summaries of our budgets:
