The cutting of education funds by individual states is a contributing factor to the skyrocketing costs of higher education, according to an official from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
In an interview with The Real News Network, Michael Leachman, director of state fiscal research for the center, said that in the past five years, states have cut education budgets by 28%, on average. Some states, he noted, have cut far more, including Alabama and New Hampshire, which have cut education by just about half.
He said that during the recession, “state higher ed took an especially deep cut, in part because states know that higher education institutions have another revenue source, and that is to raise tuition,” Leachman said. “And that’s exactly what happened. We saw very rapid tuition increases at the same time we saw these sharp declines in state funding.”
The rising cost of a college education has been a top topic for the nation in recent months, and it became even more so when President Barack Obama talked about college affordability as part of his recent State of the Union address.
“I want to work with Congress to see how we can help even more Americans who feel trapped by student loan debt,” Obama said.
In his interview, Leachman said that the students are in debt because they are shouldering a larger burden of the costs of college. He said students paid 20% of their tuition in 1987, but that number now is closer to 50%. He said the lowering of state and local funding for universities has meant that students must take on more of the financial burden.
“The entire increase in tuition at public colleges and universities over the last 25 years has gone to make up for the state and local funding cuts,” Leachman said.
Leachman’s comments were one of many in recent days following the president’s speech. In a column for the Huffington Post, for example, Brian C. Mitchell, director of the Edvance Foundation, wrote that the state of higher education in 2014 “presents a distressing picture.”
He wrote that the old business model for colleges must be changed, starting immediately, or faculty and staff could be facing a time of limited options and layoffs. He suggested that the “professionalization of business and senior administration leadership” is important, as is the use of technology to “drive some efficiencies.”
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