Calbright’s Start-Up Phase Is Ending. What Comes Next?

Calbright College is on the cusp of a transition. The all-online community college, launched in 2019, could cement its place in California’s higher ed landscape with an infusion of state funds. But if that funding doesn’t materialize, significant layoffs loom, and staff worry the cuts could undermine the institution’s mission.

Calbright was created to cater to the needs of the state’s adult learners with free, self-paced certificate programs, and state lawmakers gave the institution seven years to ramp up offerings and develop and implement a unique competency-based model. That launch was supported with $100 million in one-time start-up funds and $20 million in ongoing state support. (Amid the pandemic in 2021, the state reduced the college’s annual funding to $15 million and took back $40 million in unspent funds.)

In its first seven years, lawmakers set benchmarks for the college, including enrolling students by the last quarter of 2019, developing business and implementation plans, designing and validating 16 programs by July 2023, and achieving accreditation by spring 2025, among other milestones.

Now the college is out of runway and the guaranteed funds that came with it, creating anticipation about the future but also uncertainty. Gov. Gavin Newsom has thrown his support behind the college, proposing an additional $38 million for Calbright in his proposed 2026–27 budget, which would bring the state’s total support to $53 million. Newsom doubled down on the commitment in his revised May budget, and multiple state senators praised the college in a March hearing. However, state lawmakers have yet to release their own budget plan, due June 15.

Until the State Legislature finalizes a budget, and Newsom signs it by June 30, the college’s funding hangs in the balance—and so do many jobs at Calbright. The college sent out preliminary layoff notices to more than half of employees in February because of the budgetary uncertainty as well as state law and union contracts, which require community colleges to notify staff of impending layoffs by March 15.

The college is no stranger to uncertainty. Calbright has survived three attempts to shut it down by state lawmakers, who argued the college’s enrollment and completions lagged and its funding would be better spent elsewhere.

But Ajita Talwalker Menon, president and CEO of Calbright, said the governor’s proposal reflects renewed support from lawmakers and “demand to reach more working-age Californians.” The college now enrolls upward of 7,000 students, and over the last seven years, it has doled out more than 2,000 certificates.

Those students “tell us that what we do, creating flexible, online, competency-based education programs … allows them to upskill in a way that really fits and works with their schedules. We’re very much looking forward to this next phase of the college,” she said. “We believe that policymakers understand the harm that will be caused if Calbright doesn’t receive that funding, because it will prevent us from reaching students in all corners of California.”

Calbright’s Evolution

Newsom’s proposal has received some pushback, notably from the state Legislative Analyst’s Office. The group, which advises California lawmakers on public policy, argued in a March report that the proposed funding seemed high relative to Calbright’s recent spending and “not tied to any specific expectations, beyond the college’s original statutory objectives.”

The report acknowledged Calbright’s wins during its start-up period: Notably, enrollment grew across its 10 noncredit certificate programs to 7,660 students in 2025, up 67 percent over the previous year. Calbright also increased the number of students graduating, awarding 1,019 certificates in 2025, up 59 percent over 2024. But the report also noted that only 13.4 percent of students in 2024 completed their programs within 150 percent of the median completion time. (College leaders have long argued their students take longer to finish because of their unique needs and hurdles; 94 percent of students are 25 or older, and a quarter are parenting students, according to college data.)

The LAO concluded Calbright’s competency-based model, where students advance as they prove mastery of skills, sets it apart but questioned its cost-effectiveness and whether it differs enough from online offerings at other community colleges. It recommended lawmakers use the Student Centered Funding Formula to allocate funding for Calbright, which is used to dole out state funds to the rest of the community college system.

Calbright leaders argue that their budget hovers at about $50 million annually, and unlike community colleges, they don’t receive any local funds because they’re not rooted in a particular district. Students also enroll throughout the year versus for quarters or semesters, making the funding formula—based on enrollment and other performance metrics—an imperfect fit, Menon said.

“One of the challenges is getting folks to really understand how what we do is distinct and different,” she said. “These are not just a collection of online courses” but “a digital infrastructure that has been built with understanding how we optimize that human touch and support to make digital learning effective” that allow “learners to demonstrate the skills that they’re building.”

She acknowledged lessons have been learned along the way, and from her perspective, that’s part of the design. For example, student feedback revealed an appreciation for Calbright’s flexibility but also a desire for more structure, so the college introduced more supports and interventions along certificate pathways.

Last year, the college hired Academic Leadership Group, a higher education consulting firm, to help plan out the next steps beyond the start-up phase. The group surveyed 154 people across the college and conducted seven focus groups last fall and delivered a high-level overview of results to the Calbright Board of Trustees in January. ALG praised Calbright for its “adaptive,” “innovative” and “mission-driven” approach and set goals for the future, including “role clarification” and “enhanced collaboration.”

Calbright’s evolution is “so dynamic, and it’s so different from what we see in traditional education,” said Menon. The goal “is to evolve and to improve pretty continuously.”

A Time of Uncertainty

But some employees, who spoke with Inside Higher Ed on the condition of anonymity, expressed trepidation about Calbright’s next phase, saying they’re in the dark about the college’s short- and long-term plans as they await layoffs, which take effect in July unless officials rescind them.

In total, 93 of the college’s 178 employees received layoff notices, approved in May by Calbright’s Board of Trustees.

Menon stressed that, if the governor’s proposed funding comes through, the plan is to “move very rapidly into recalling and retaining as many staff as possible.”

But staff want more assurances, and without a clear rehiring plan, “there’s a lot of frustration, a lot of anger, disappointment, mistrust,” said one employee who received a layoff notice. They said some employees have pressed leaders for details about how recall decisions will be made, without success. They’ve also asked to see the results of ALG’s surveys to better understand the college’s long-term plans but have yet to receive them.

Staff also worry that the planned layoffs will leave fewer staff in student-facing roles, which could hinder Calbright’s mission and make it feel more like a tech start-up than a higher ed institution.

More than a quarter of layoff notices were sent to employees in the student success department, including 11 student support specialists and four student engagement specialists, according to data from the college. The layoffs include more than 70 percent of classified staff—55 employees—and more than 68 percent of managers, or 31 employees. (Four faculty members were initially affected, but an administrative law judge recommended against those terminations in recent hearings, arguing the college didn’t have the criteria in place for faculty to establish cause.)

Jonathan Nezzer, a student support specialist, said at the May Board of Trustees meeting that he’s disturbed “the people closest to these students” are “the most disposable line on the ledger.”

For Calbright, “equity was not a slogan affixed to a strategic plan—it was the soil,” he said. “The student support specialists in enrollment services, the hourly staff you are excising, has been the ones tending it call by call, case by case, student by student.”

Sarah Jimenez, Calbright’s interim vice president of marketing, communications and outreach, emphasized that the layoff decisions span departments and were made with “great intention of maintaining core, critical programs and services for students.”

“Calbright today is not really an organization that can thrive on the budget that we’ve been forced to fit into, and that’s what the reduction-in-force notices reflect,” Jimenez said. “We very much believe that to fulfill our mandate to reach as many adult learners as possible, we need the talent that we have across this college … and it is also unfortunate that we have to do this at this time because we do not know yet what the state budget holds for us.”

Cindy Carney, president of the Calbright Faculty Association and lead instructor for medical coding and billing, said she feels for classified staff waiting to hear about their positions; the same mood of uncertainty is partly what motivated part-time faculty members to join the college’s faculty union this year, which the college supported.

“We want to be positive, but until that ink is on the paper, we don’t want to celebrate just yet,” she said of the state budget.

At the same time, as someone who’s been at Calbright since its founding, she’s seen it survive a “wild ride,” and she’s hopeful it’ll successfully navigate the transition from the start-up phase into its next era.

“Because I understand the need of Calbright,” she said. “I’ve seen the success stories from our students that have completed the programs and have been able to either start a new career or even upskill a current dead-end position that they’re in … I know we’re still trying to figure things out, but I’ve always felt that hopefulness.”