This brief offers a detailed overview of how states and higher education systems allocate funding to public colleges and universities and how funding mechanisms have changed over time. We find growth in the number of “hybrid” funding models that incorporate enrollment, performance, and/or prior year allocation (base+) considerations in both the two- and four-year sectors. At the same time, funding formulas with a student enrollment component remained the predominant funding mechanism in the two-year sector. We find a decreasing number of four-year systems with funding provisions aimed at improving the research capacity of institutions since the Great Recession. We see a steady number of two- and four-year sectors that include provisions that seek to provide more equitable funding for institutions based on the institution’s characteristics or the characteristics of students enrolled at the institution.
