US: Terrible fiscal decline for higher education

By any financial measure, this fiscal year is a terrible one for public higher education. And while that's no surprise to anyone working at a state college or university, new national data document the extent of the loss of state support, writes Scott Jaschik for Inside Higher Ed.

Total state support for higher education for 2009-10 - including federal stimulus dollars - is US$79.4 billion, which is a decline of 1.1% from the prior year and 1.7% from the year before that. This represents a dramatic shift from the three-year period of 2005 to 2008 when state support grew 24% to $80.7 billion - without federal stimulus dollars in the equation.

Without the federal stimulus contribution, which is now over, state support this year would have been down 3.5% over one year and 6.8% over two years. These figures were released last week in Grapevine, which since 1960 has been the definitive source of annual data on state support for higher education. Grapevine has been published by the Illinois State University Center for the Study of Education Policy, and starting this year it is also being produced by the State Higher Education Executive Officers.
Full report on the Inside Higher Ed site