States Are Slashing College Budgets and Raising Tuition
In 48 U.S. states, government spending on each college student is still below where it was before the recession that ended almost six years ago. Now, at least seven governors propose cutting deeper.
Republicans in Wisconsin and Louisiana, whose governors hold White House ambitions, as well as Illinois, Arizona, Alaska and West Virginia, all would reduce support for colleges and universities in budgets under consideration this year. Connecticut’s Democratic leader, Dannel Malloy, has joined them. In Kansas, shortfalls induced by tax cuts championed by Republican Governor Sam Brownback led to a 2 percent cut to universities set to take effect this week.
The proposals are part of a decades-long shift of making students pay for an increasing share of postsecondary education, leading to tuition increases at public institutions that outpace those at private schools. They come as a diploma, a driver of social and economic mobility that fueled the country’s post-war boom, is more important than ever to both individual and state prosperity.
“When we’re saying more and more Americans need to have this education, we’re pricing it so that the vast group that has never had it before can’t afford it,” said George Pernsteiner, president of the State Higher Education Executive Officers association.
Two-thirds of the 165 million U.S. jobs in 2020 will require education beyond high school, according to Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. In 1973, fewer than a third did.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-05/states-are-slashing-college-budgets-and-raising-tuition
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