Slowdown in Enrollment Growth Leaves Public Colleges With More State and Local Money per Student, Report Says
Chronicle of Higher Education 3/8/07
Although overall state and local spending on public colleges began rising after the 2003-4 fiscal year -- following two straight years of decline -- total enrollment at such institutions continued to rise as well. So while public colleges received more state support in the 2004-5 fiscal year, a 1.9-percent increase in enrollment during that period left them with fewer dollars per student, adjusting for inflation, than they had received the year before, the report concludes. The organization that produced the report represents top state higher-education officials and is based in Boulder, Colo.
During the 2005-6 academic year, enrollment finally leveled off, rising by just 0.4 percent. With state and local support for higher education rising by 7.6 percent that year in inflation-adjusted dollars, the overall result was a 5.1-percent increase in spending per student, the report found. One consequence of the improving financial picture for public colleges was that, for the first time since the 2000-1 fiscal year, state spending on operations at those colleges rose faster than their tuition.
The last time state and local spending on public colleges had risen in per-student terms was in the 2000-1 fiscal year, when it climbed slightly, by 0.4 percent. Before that, per-student spending had generally been on the upswing since 1993, the report says.
The report cautions that its aggregate numbers for the nation are not representative of what happened in individual states, and some have had much stronger economic growth in recent years than others. While 43 states were spending less per college student (adjusted for inflation) in the 2005-6 fiscal year than they had in 2000-1, seven others were spending more. On average, states were spending 14.2 percent less per student. At the extremes for such spending over that period were Colorado, down 37.9 percent, and New Mexico, up 23 percent.
In an interview on Tuesday, Paul E. Lingenfelter, president of the state-officers group, said the report's overall findings were in keeping with a cyclical pattern in higher education observed over at least the last three decades: When the economy sours, more people tend to head off to college, causing enrollments to rise just as state budgets for higher education are already being stretched thin. Conversely, he said, "when recessions are over, job opportunities improve," and "the opportunity cost of leaving the labor market and going back to school is higher because you can get a good job, and enrollments tend to level off."
In the 2002-3 academic year, for example, total enrollment at public colleges spiked by 5.2 percent even as state and local support for higher education was being cut. As of the 2004-5 fiscal year, public colleges were receiving less state and local support per student, adjusted for inflation, than they had at any time in a quarter century.
The report does not draw conclusions about the current fiscal and academic year because it is too early to have full data on enrollments and other key indicators used by the researchers. The Center for the Study of Education Policy at Illinois State University recently found that overall state spending on higher education rose by 7.1 percent this fiscal year, so, as long as enrollments did not rise much faster than expected, an increase in per-student report is likely to have occurred.
Mr. Lingenfelter said that, during the economic downturn of earlier this decade, "people were making all kinds of apocalyptic claims that the states had abandoned higher education and no longer cared about it." But the latest report's findings, he said, show "that is not really the truth."