Student Tuition Now Officially Pays More Than States For Public College Funding

[marmar]

Students now pay more of the cost of attending public universities than state governments, according to a recent Government Accountability Office report, and the federal agency says it's making college unaffordable.

Tuition officially surpassed state funding in fiscal year 2012, the GAO found, accounting for 25 percent of public college revenue. Meanwhile all state sources dipped from 32 percent in 2003 to 23 percent in 2012.

"These increases have contributed to the decline in college affordability as students and their families are bearing the cost of college as a larger portion of their total family budgets," the GAO wrote.



The report was submitted on Dec. 16, 2014 to Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), the outgoing chair of the Senate Education committee, just as most college campuses were emptying out for winter break. The study looked at the revenue sources for state universities from 2003 through 2012. ........................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/04/student-tuition-public-colleges-gao_n_6411998.html

[Recursion]

1. That's hugely important, and awful news (nt)

[SunSeeker]

2. K & R for exposure. nt

[mopinko]

3. criminal. how many ways are we gonna shoot ourselves in the foot?

the stoooopid. it burns. burns us all.

[liberal_at_heart]

4. This does not surprise me at all. I have been saying for years that the federal and state

governments must start increasing funding to both K-12 and universities.

[LibDemAlways]

5. Parent of a UC senior here. I have been shelling out $18K in

yearly tuition for four years now. When I enrolled at a public Calif. university in 1970, I paid $144.00 tuition for the year. Public education shoud not be out of the reach of the public. My daughter is fortunate to be an only child. There is no way I could finance a second college education. She's also lucky that she will graduate debt free. Many of her fellow graduates will struggle for years to pay off student loans. Our priorities as a country are totally screwed up.

[exboyfil]

6. Is she in a special major?

The website I saw had Tuition and Fees for instate at $13,300, still too much.

Here in Iowa until recently the trend was holding about the same for percentage of total revenue for combined K-12 and public university, but shifting the money to K-12 (thus increasing that spend above revenue growth) while seeing a drop, sometimes even in absolute numbers, on funding of our three universities. I have gotten a nice present since my older daughter started college, the tuition has been frozen.

[LibDemAlways]

7. I don't know where the $13,300 comes from. it's not accurate.

I just paid winter quarter tuition/fees of just shy of six grand. Times 3 quarters is 18k. Of course that doesn't take into account over 700 a month for her share of a tiny apartment not to mention other living expenses. Students at her school who are not covered by health insurance are also required to pay $2400 a year for the privilege of using the on-campus sevices. And I receive a nightly phone call from the school asking for additional voluntary donations. It never stops.

[MisterP]

8. excuse me, don't you mean "client tuition"?

[n2doc]

9. All part of the plan

Mine out all savings from the middle class, and finally ensure that no one but the rich can afford to go to college. And people just go along with this, because the rich have to be coddled and protected. And we have to throw a large number of people in jail for minor crimes to make sure the prisons make lots of money for their operators.