As recently reported by Bloomberg, in forty-eight U.S. states, government spending on each college student remains below where it was before the recession that began in December of 2007. Governors in Wisconsin, Louisiana, Illinois, Arizona, Alaska, West Virginia and Connecticut are each poised to reduce support for colleges and universities in budgets under consideration this year.
The result – rising tuition. In 2013, the latest year for which data are available, tuition accounted for about forty eight percent of public higher education revenue. That’s double what it was in 1988 when states provided relatively greater support for higher education. Many economists believe this pattern to be deeply problematic.
According to Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce, two thirds of the one hundred sixty five million U.S. jobs in 2020 will require education beyond high school. In 1973, fewer than a third did. New York and Maryland have been the East Coast’s leaders in terms of sustaining support for higher education since the recession began.
