{
  "id": "2003-marchapril-education-analysis-helps-uncover-college-funding-scheme",
  "slug": "2003-marchapril-education-analysis-helps-uncover-college-funding-scheme",
  "url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/2003-marchapril-education-analysis-helps-uncover-college-funding-scheme.html",
  "year": 2003,
  "month": "March/April",
  "monthNum": 3,
  "headline": "EDUCATION Analysis helps uncover college funding scheme",
  "kicker": "",
  "author_name": "Natalya Shulyakovskaya",
  "author_title": "Reporter",
  "affiliation": "The Orange County Register",
  "summary": "A newspaper investigation uncovered a scheme where California community colleges enrolled high school athletes in fake college physical education courses taught by their high school coaches, allowing them to earn college credits without completing the work.",
  "keywords": [
    "credits",
    "fraud",
    "colleges"
  ],
  "topics": [
    "Education",
    "Data & Databases",
    "Investigative Methods"
  ],
  "technologies": [
    "ASCII"
  ],
  "full_text": "Our \"Phantom Classes\" series started with a tip from a parent: His two sons had received community college credits for playing baseball in high school. Their college transcripts from Cypress College showed they had gotten A's even though they had to transfer to another high school and did not even complete the course.\n\nBy the time I joined the project in late August 2002, my colleagues Scott Reid and Marla Jo Fisher had already found that Orange County community colleges enrolled high school athletes in droves in what they called college physical education courses. Their high school coaches rounded them up for the classes and got paid to run the phantom college courses. These classes, called Bridge P.E., are a variation of the legitimate \"Bridge Program\" that allows qualified high school students to \"bridge\" gaps in their educational programs by taking tougher community college classes that meet their educational needs.\n\nAfter I joined the project, we turned to data analysis to get a clear picture of the extent of the program. In early September, we requested enrollment, course, student and faculty data from the California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office, using the California Public Records Law.\n\nIt took two months of negotiations - e-mails, letters and even appeals to state legislators - until we received some of the data we needed.\n\nThe Chancellor's Office argued that it could not release student-level data because the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act prohibits the release of easily identifiable student records. Citing the same law, it argued that it could not strip all the identifiable information and replace the unique identification numbers that link the student and course tables. We accepted course summary data under protest.\n\nThe data came from the Chancellor's Office Management Information System (MIS), which gathers information from California's 108 community colleges. We were not charged for the data, which the office provided as ASCII fixed format files and allowed us to download from its Web site.\n\nTracking enrollment\n\nThe data covered 10 academic years starting from 1992-93 and contained records for 1.5 million courses, listing the number of students, the number of high school students and the number of full-time equivalent students, or FTEs, each course generated. The colleges use FTEs to track their workload and apply for funding.\n\nThe Register also obtained three additional tables from the MIS office. The tables listed more details for each course, including whether the courses were offered for credit. The state allocates a much larger chunk of funding based on the number of for-credit FTEs. In fact, more than 80 percent of taxpayer funding is allocated to community colleges on the basis of for-credit FTEs, and we focused our analysis on those.\n\nOddly, some of the totals the colleges reported for budget apportionment purposes were different from the numbers they had submitted for the MIS database. It took some tests, conversations with colleges and college finance experts to figure out how to handle the discrepancies - especially since the numbers fluctuated both ways.\n\nOur analysis of the data showed that while the entire community college enrollment grew by 20 percent in the last 10 years, growth in the physical education classes outpaced most other courses, increasing seven-fold. Since the 1992-93 academic year, it ballooned from a mere 0.3 percent of the entire California community college system's enrollment to almost 2 percent.\n\nCalculating costs\n\nIn order to figure out how much the phantom P.E. courses were worth, we waded though the state apportionment reports and built a database detailing funding allocations for each community college district and for the state, based on enrollment. The apportionment calculations are used to distribute money to community college districts. They are based on numbers the districts report to the state.\n\nFive years worth of apportionment reports, in Adobe Acrobat format, was available on the Chancellor's Office Web site. Each contained at least 72 pages densely covered with numbers and text.\n\nWhen I asked for the 10 years of the data in tables, I was told it would take about 12 weeks to compile. I saved the data in the Acrobat files as text. It then took me a day to write, test and modify a FoxPro program that parsed each report into a database.\n\nMost of the muscle work, including rebuilding and condensing the tables, was done in Microsoft SQL Server. SPSS came in handy for the final analysis.\n\nTo understand the community college financing, I retraced steps used for calculating apportionment funding. I used three main sources for understanding how the complicated funding formulas worked: materials the Chancellor's Office provided to the college administrators during its annual statewide budget information workshops; Title V regulations that outlined funding algorithms, and spreadsheets used by the colleges to estimate their funding.\n\nWhen my results came within 0.009 percent of the state's own numbers, I felt confident enough to start estimating the worth of different courses to community colleges.\n\nOur most conservative analysis showed that in the 2001-02 academic year, high school athletes counted as community college students generated at least $56 million for the colleges. Our reporting showed that in their quest for higher enrollment and, ultimately, more taxpayer dollars, the colleges broke the rules defining what could be called a college course. The Bridge P.E. classes amounted to nothing more than regular high school sports practices. Some classes were not held at all. Colleges paid millions to high-school coaches to sign up and train the enrolled high school kids.\n\nDoing the math\n\nHere is how I calculated the key numbers:\n\n$56 million received for Bridge P.E. classes\n\nUsing the MIS database, I calculated a percentage of total credit FTEs that the colleges reported based on their Bridge P.E. enrollment. For example, in 2001-02, Bridge P.E. accounted for 1.8 percent of all for-credit FTEs. That year the state distributed $3.3 billion based on for-credit FTEs.\n\nBecause of budget growth limits established by the state, the state funded only 96 percent of all for-credit enrollments at community colleges in 2001-02. So we adjusted the final worth of Bridge P.E. to reflect that.\n\nSome administrators argued that because Bridge P.E. represents roughly 2 percent of the entire enrollment these sports classes essentially are run at no cost to taxpayers. They base their argument on the fact that the funding shortfall is 4 percent. But the state doesn't calculate funding this way, records and interviews show. In reality, colleges apply for funding based on their total enrollment - including Bridge P.E.\n\nAt least 77 of the 108 California community colleges conducted Bridge P.E. classes at high schools in spring 2002.\n\nI counted only the colleges that had more than 100 high school athletes enrolled.\n\nTo come up with the most conservative estimate, The Register adjusted the numbers of students counted by the Chancellor's Office downward to reflect differences between those numbers and the numbers the colleges themselves report to the Chancellor's Office fiscal unit.\n\nFor some colleges, counts in the MIS data were lower than those reported to the fiscal unit. For others, they were higher. The Register adjusted down the numbers for over-reporting colleges. The adjustment was done only to analyze district-level data.\n\nStatewide data was not adjusted because the state does not adjust its data. The Register also ran tests to make sure the differences between the two different state databases did not affect the overall trends.\n\nTypical P.E. class\n\nThe Register calculated the median for the 2001-02 Bridge P.E. courses: 166 high school students.\n\nPercent of state-funded growth for community colleges\n\nThe Register used the state budget apportionment data to calculate funded growth. Then the growth in Bridge P.E. was calculated using the MIS data. Because enrollment has not been funded fully, growth in Bridge P.E. was adjusted accordingly. Then I calculated percentages.\n\nAs a result of our questions and stories, the state announced it was withholding $80 million from the community colleges this year. The Chancellor's Office and the state Department of Finance announced they were going to conduct a system-wide audit. California legislators have called for an independent audit. Some colleges have canceled their planned P.E. classes for high school students. Our phones and mailboxes were flooded by messages from outraged readers and parents. The stories - especially in the midst of the California budget crisis - have really touched a nerve.\n\nFor broader look at the reporting behind the series, read the March/April 2003 IRE Journal.\n\nYou can read the stories online at www.ocregister.com/features/phantom_classes.\n\nContact Natalya Shulyakovskaya by e-mail at natalyas@ocregister.com",
  "provenance": {
    "extracted_by": "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-6",
    "extracted_at": "2026-07-05",
    "verified": true
  },
  "similar": [
    {
      "slug": "2001-julyaugust-education-tipsheets",
      "score": 0.162
    },
    {
      "slug": "2004-july-august-property-data-analysis-finds-extra-tax-credits",
      "score": 0.157
    },
    {
      "slug": "1995-may-not-every-college-offers-car-knowledge",
      "score": 0.15
    },
    {
      "slug": "2000-december-equity",
      "score": 0.146
    },
    {
      "slug": "2001-julyaugust-funding-schools",
      "score": 0.145
    }
  ],
  "html_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/2003-marchapril-education-analysis-helps-uncover-college-funding-scheme.html",
  "json_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/2003-marchapril-education-analysis-helps-uncover-college-funding-scheme.json"
}