Young People Advocating for (and Winning) Community College Finance Reform in Texas

The Challenge: A Narrative Without Students in It

Young Invincibles is a national nonprofit organization whose mission is to amplify the voices of young adults in the political process and expand economic opportunity. In 2022, they identified an opportunity for community college students to shift the narrative about the cost of higher education in Texas. They were part of a coalition effort to reform the finance system for community colleges in Texas. Advocates and policymakers were focusing on a policy solution that would tie state funding to community colleges’ career-related outcomes rather than enrollment at a time of declining enrollment. Young Invincibles saw an opportunity not only to change the formula for how funds are allocated to community colleges, but also to increase the funds available for financial aid and thereby expand economic opportunities for young Texans living on lower incomes.

Persuading policymakers to listen to young people advocating for increased state funding wouldn’t be easy. Fortunately, that year Young Invincibles was part of the Pathways Narrative Project, funded by the Gates Foundation, Walton Family Foundation, and an anonymous funder. The Pathways project gave Young Invincibles access to Wonder strategists and coaches who could help to build their capacity to conduct Heartwired audience research and craft messaging strategies to shape the discourse about community college finance reform in Texas. Young Invincibles conducted a media and messaging audit as well as in-depth interviews with Texas policymakers and advocates to identify narrative strategies that would help them win their policy campaign and build young people’s narrative power. 

The media and messaging audit revealed a dominant narrative that community colleges were suffering financially due to declining enrollment and unable to address workforce gaps in Texas. In this narrative, students were largely absent. Students were occasionally quoted in news articles or social media, sharing a personal anecdote about not being able to afford college, but students were never positioned as experts who could define solutions or drive the narrative. Even within higher education advocacy groups’ own messaging, student voices were often not included.

Qualitative in-depth interviews with Texas policymakers and advocates uncovered a critical disconnect: while these stakeholders frequently stated that they valued student voices, they ultimately did not believe that students had the power to actually influence or shape how legislators make policy in Texas. As one research participant stated: 

I would be shocked if, at the actual decision making table, if a student was actually physically or even virtually represented at that table. That’s not to say that it’s not an important thing to kind of pursue. I would just say it’s impractical.

Compounding this, legislators tended to pay significantly more attention to the business community and employers within their districts, who were considered a major audience. This meant Young Invincibles needed to overcome a perception of student powerlessness and redirect legislative attention away from business interests and toward student needs to achieve their policy objectives.

 

Show Don’t Tell: Young People’s Voices Matter 

How to convince policymakers to actually listen to young people? Wonder supported Young Invincibles in designing and running the message testing process. Together, Wonder and Young Invincibles created story-based content with community college students, such as committee testimony, sample op-eds, social media posts, and video compilations, and tested it via in-depth interviews with policymakers. In interviews, policymakers responded well to positive student stories, especially those framed around students’ lived experiences and presented as testimony connected to a specific policy solution. This approach was effective when it showed how student voices mattered through storytelling, rather than explicitly telling policymakers that they should listen to young people — those messages came across as moralistic and backfired. 

Based on these Heartwired audience insights, Young Invincibles crafted a multifaceted strategy to build the narrative power of young people: 

• Train student leaders in effective storytelling based on the audience research findings about what was most persuasive with Texas legislators.
• Shift the dominant narrative in media and advocacy from focusing on “what employers need from community colleges” to “what students need from community colleges.”
• Directly engage with Texas legislators by having young people act as messengers, sharing their stories during legislative visits and committee hearings.

Young Invincibles trained 12 student leaders in persuasive storytelling. Those leaders then engaged over a thousand community college students to share their stories with legislators at the statehouse in Austin. Many of these students actively participated in the legislative process, testifying 22 times for the legislation during various committee hearings as the community college finance reform bill progressed. Additionally, the narrative shifted: news stories began to feature students, and coverage was framed around “what students need,” marking a notable change from the initial media audit’s focus solely on workforce gaps. 

 

Young People Secure a Historic Policy Win in Texas

Ultimately, the legislation passed and rewrote the formula for funding community colleges in Texas. But more importantly to Young Invincibles and their community college student advocates, the new law dedicated $684 million to Texas community colleges, representing a 20% increase in funding. The law also increased financial aid and scholarships for low-income dual credit students. Young Invincibles had achieved their primary policy objective of making community college more affordable — and those policy changes would not have been included in the final legislation without the influence of student leaders. 

Post-legislation interviews with state legislators confirmed the profound impact of the campaign to amplify students’ voices. Without any prompting, legislators shared how powerful and influential students were to their decision-making process. For example, one state legislator explained: 

We heard from a lot of community college students as we took testimony, especially in the public testimony portion of our hearings, and that was very impactful, very important. We can sit in a room in Austin, in the Capitol, and think we know what is needed out there. But to have people come in and share their life experiences, what is happening for them right now in the community college and the barriers they’re facing, the opportunities that [are] provided them — that was very impactful as we crafted the final bill and pushed it through the legislative process, ultimately to the Governor’s signature.

Since the historic policy win, Young Invincibles has continued utilizing the narrative power-building and persuasive communications capacities they developed in partnership with Wonder to shape other campaign work. As Young Invincibles’ Policy and Advocacy Manager shared:

The project’s process [with Wonder] inspired us to realize that building narrative power is essential for effecting change. For this project, mobilizing young adults, providing them with information and resources, and helping them better understand their narrative power was crucial in creating actionable change.