Student tuition playing larger role in funding for public universities
The aftermath of the Great Recession is continuing to wreak havoc on state budgets, which is, consequentially, hitting the pocketbooks of college students. A recent article in The New York Times highlighted the rising costs of tuition at public universities across the country, which are strapped for cash due to strained state budgets, which use tax money to fund the schools. According to data by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, some 30 states have a budget deficit of at least 10 percent, which the NYT article points out.
“The difference between this downturn and others in the past is that this time I don’t think higher education will be able to recover the ground it’s lost,” Scott Pattison, Executive Director of the National Association of State Budget Officers, told the NYT. “I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t see that money coming back. And with tuition already out of reach for many folks, I don’t think there’s much ability to keep raising it.”
The NYT cited California, where public school tuition rose 30 percent over the last two years and the governor has proposed cutting $500 million from the University of California education system, as an example of a state facing economic circumstances that could lead tuition costs to explode.
“If approved, this budget will mean that for the first time in our long history, tuition paid by University of California students and their families will exceed the state’s contribution to the core fund,” Mark Yudof, the president of the University of California system, told the Board of Regents, according to the NYT. “For those who believe what we provide is a public good, not a private one, this is a sad threshold to cross.”
A 2008 report by the Delta Cost Project found that the majority of public research universities had more than half of their operating costs paid for by student tuition. At that time, the figure was hovering around the 50 percent mark for other public, four-year institutions and experts say that after three years of tuition increases it has probably crossed that line.
