This study provides a detailed description of revenue and expenditure patterns of the United States community college by state and by institutional type (rural-, suburban-serving, and urban-serving) for each five-year period from 1980-81 to 2000-01. The Katsinas, Lacey, and Hardy classification schema for community colleges is used to analyze data from the National Center for Education Statistics' Integrated Postsecondary Educational Data System (IPEDS) and Higher Education General Information Surveys (HEGIS). Further analysis clusters states into the following groupings: states with/without substantial local funding, large "mega-states" versus all other states (employing the methodology developed by Grapevine at Illinois State University), and the structure of state coordination (as developed by Tollefson and others in their studies of state community college systems). The analysis showed wide differences in the various funding patterns for community colleges as related to revenue streams. As late as 1980-91, 16 states contributed 60% or more of the total budgets for their community colleges; by 2000-01, no state did so. By college type, rural-serving community colleges saw the greatest net negative change in their operating budget margins, from 3.2% to 0.4%, although it should be noted that every one of the community college types also experienced a significant decline in this margin. By type of governance, the statewide coordinating board type experienced the sharpest decrease in the percent of total revenue from state appropriations; revenue fell 18.6%. Yet this governance type, which includes California's community colleges, was the only one to benefit from a positive change in the net margin ratio over the 20-year period covered by this study. States with local funding saw a 2.9% increase in the percent of total revenues from tuition and fees, compared to the 5.9% increase in those states that did not have some form of local funding. State-by-state analyses are included in the appendices.
