by Jeff Selingo, Washington Post
At the beginning of last decade, college students who went to public universities paid for about one-third of their education. Today, in more than half the states, they pay for most of it. In that time, the College Board has found that the average price of tuition, room, board and fees at public institutions has risen more than 60 percent, to $20,770. Research by Douglas Webber, an associate professor in economics at Temple University, has found that colleges raise tuition by about $300 for every $1,000 in funds cut by the state. The rapid disinvestment by states this century in public higher education happened not because of one event, but a confluence of factors that has made it more expensive for students and their families to attend most state colleges. First, funding levels failed to keep up with the influx of students to public campuses last decade because of the rising numbers of high school graduates. Second, the Great Recession of 2008 decimated state budgets. While after previous downturns higher education eventually recovered those dollars, not this time. In only six states have higher education budgets returned to or surpassed their pre-recession levels; in 19 states, expenditures per student are at least 20 percent lower than before the recession.
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