California College Fee Waiver Implementation Audit.

This audit codes how California's College Fee Waiver for Veteran Dependents is published across the two levels a family actually touches: the 58 County Veterans Service Offices that take applications, and the 148 public campuses where the waiver is used. Every county page and every rostered campus veterans page was loaded, content-checked, and coded under a documented protocol in a single collection window. 46 of 58 county pages name the benefit and 17 state specific intake channels; 75 of 148 campus veterans pages mention it. The clearest official conflict found is on CalVet's own program page, which displays two different Plan B income limits. No statewide public dataset reports waiver outcomes. The full coded tables, coding guide, data dictionary, and per-row sources are published with this audit.

The official conflict record lives in the source discrepancy tracker; the prepared records requests are in the public records log.

• Does each of California's 58 counties publish a College Fee Waiver pathway, and which application intake channels does the published page state?
• Does each public campus's veterans page name the CalVet College Fee Waiver, and does the campus host its own instruction page?
• Where do official sources conflict with each other about the same rule or figure?
• What information a family would need is missing from the public record?

Unit of analysis: the published county or campus page, coded under the protocol below. This audit codes what the public record says, not office practice.

Counties: All 58 California counties. The audited page is the county's published veterans services or fee waiver page; where a county publishes no dedicated veterans page, the closest published county resource page was audited and the entry says so.

Campuses: All 148 currently operating public campuses per the system offices' published rosters (verified 2026-08-26): 116 California Community Colleges (including Calbright), 22 CSU, 10 UC. Two noncredit community colleges are excluded per the roster standard.

Exclusions: Only mentions of the CalVet College Fee Waiver are counted. Mentions of other programs that waive fees (the California College Promise Grant, application fee waivers) are not counted as fee waiver mentions.

• For each county: the published veterans services or fee waiver page (loaded and content-checked on the retrieval date), whether the audited page mentions the College Fee Waiver, and any intake channels the page itself states (online, email, fax, mail, in person, walk in).
• Most pages were content-checked with direct fetches. Pages that render entirely client side were verified with a browser-rendered audit. One page that sits behind an anti-bot verification wall was verified from an Internet Archive snapshot; its entry says so.
• Campus coding: the campus's veterans or military student services page was loaded and content-checked on the verification date. A campus is coded true only when the audited page itself mentions the CalVet College Fee Waiver. Campus-hosted instruction pages are recorded separately; links out to CalVet are not counted as campus-hosted instructions.
• Missing information is coded as missing, never as failure. A page that does not name the benefit is recorded exactly that way; no county or campus is scored, graded, or ranked.
• A county without a verified entry is not being scored or criticized; it means the Observatory has not yet independently verified its page. Counties can submit their current page through the issue form.

• Statute (California Education Code section 66025.3) controls over everything below it.
• CalVet's program page controls program rules; where its own sections conflict, the conflict is published in the source discrepancy tracker rather than silently resolved.
• Systemwide guidance (CCC Chancellor's Office, CSU, UC) controls over individual campus pages.
• County and campus pages are evidence of published local practice, not of the law.

Full coded fields, including the per-channel columns and plain-language notes, are in the CSV and JSON downloads. County detail with methodology lives on the county pathway map.

By system: CCC 58 of 116 pages name the waiver, CSU 14 of 22, UC 3 of 10. 27 campuses host their own instruction page and 120 publish a veterans office email.

Full profiles with contacts and verification dates live in the campus directory.

• A county or campus page that does not name the fee waiver does not mean the office does not administer or certify it. Content management migrations, page architecture, and reliance on CalVet's own materials are all plausible explanations.
• A page without stated intake channels does not mean no channels exist; it means the audited page does not state them.
• Differences between counties may reflect staffing and web resources rather than program knowledge.

• This audit codes published information, not actual office practice. It cannot observe what happens when a family calls or walks in.
• All pages were coded in a single collection window (retrieved 2026-08-26); pages change, and each row carries its retrieval date so readers can re-verify.
• Campus coding covers the audited veterans page, not every page a campus publishes.
• No outcome data (applications, approvals, denials, processing times) exists in this audit because no statewide public dataset reports it. Records requests seeking aggregate outcome data are prepared in the public records log.

• Counties that publish intake channels give families a complete filing path on one page; San Diego County's instructions page (email, fax, mail, and in-person channels plus the current income limit) is an existing model any county could adapt.
• CalVet could reconcile the two Plan B income limits its own page displays, so a family reading only the Eligibility tab does not measure against an outdated figure.
• System offices could encourage campuses to name the fee waiver on their veterans pages, since families commonly meet the benefit on a campus page first.
• A statewide aggregate report of fee waiver applications, determinations, and processing times would let every county and the Legislature see how implementation performs. No such public dataset exists today.

A print-ready version for staff work is the two-page policymaker brief. The responsibility map shows which office owns each step.

The JSON export carries both tables, both dictionaries, the coverage figures, and the same SHA-256 hashes for independent verification. CSVs are guarded against spreadsheet formula injection.

• v1.0 (2026-08-27): First publication. County universe complete (58 of 58 pages coded); campus universe complete (all 148 rostered public campuses coded on their audited veterans pages). Datasets, data dictionary, coding guide, findings, limitations, and the two-page policymaker brief published together.

No corrections have been required to this audit yet. If one becomes necessary it will be listed here and on the Observatory corrections page, and the version number will change. Corrections policy: Observatory corrections.

Peer review status: Independent analysis, not peer reviewed.

External factual review: Factual review does not provide editorial control and does not constitute endorsement. We correct factual errors, publish explanatory responses, and state each entity's response status either way.

Agency factual review not yet requested. Completion of the county pathway coding was shared with the county veterans service officer association on the record (2026-08-26).