Accelerating Recovery in Community Colleges Network Lead: Survey of Pandemic Relief Spending and Recovery Strategies, United States, 2020-2023

In order to assist higher education institutions and their students during the pandemic, the federal government established the Higher Education Emergency Relief (HEER) fund, which directed over $75 billion to institutions of higher education - including nearly $25 billion to community colleges - over a three-year period. Researchers at the Community College Research Center (CCRC), the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), and Wheelhouse: The Center for Community College Leadership and Research at the University of California, Davis (Wheelhouse) partnered through the Accelerating Recovery in Community Colleges (ARCC) Network to understand how community colleges used HEER funds to support their students and institutions during the pandemic.

This data collection contains responses from a survey of 170 community colleges across six states: California, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Tennessee, and Texas. This institutional survey of pandemic relief spending and recovery strategies attempted to answer the following research questions:

1. How did colleges use HEER student and institutional aid?
2. How did colleges target specific populations for HEER-funded student supports?
3. What do colleges' expenditure patterns reveal about how student and institutional needs changed over time?
4. How successful did colleges perceive HEER funds to be in meeting student and institutional needs during the pandemic?
5. What do colleges' concerns about the end of HEER funds reveal about how to prioritize future funding efforts?
6. In what ways did colleges' experiences with HEER funds vary based on institutional characteristics?

The resulting dataset provides insight into the specific pandemic recovery activities colleges implemented, colleges' perceptions of how successful funds were in addressing student and institutional needs during the pandemic, and what institutional needs were not met by aid.