Thursday, December 18, 2014

GAO: States' share of higher ed funding declines again; students stiffed with bill, again

This trend has been under way for a long time …

According to a study for the U.S. Government Accountablity Office, state appropriations to public colleges and universities continued to drop and tuition continued to rise from 2003 through 2012. Or, as The Atlantic puts it in a blog post today, "Students Are Bankrolling Public Colleges Now More Than Ever Before." The GAO's executive summary:

From fiscal years 2003 through 2012, state funding for all public colleges decreased, while tuition rose. Specifically, state funding decreased by 12 percent overall while median tuition rose 55 percent across all public colleges. The decline in state funding for public colleges may have been due in part to the impact of the recent recession on state budgets. Colleges began receiving less of their total funding from states and increasingly relied on tuition revenue during this period. Tuition revenue for public colleges increased from 17 percent to 25 percent, surpassing state funding by fiscal year 2012, as shown below. Correspondingly, average net tuition, which is the estimated tuition after grant aid is deducted, also increased by 19 percent during this period. These increases have contributed to the decline in college affordability as students and their families are bearing the cost of college as a larger portion of their total family budgets.

No comments: