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State funding per student has steadily declined since 1987. Tuition rates have risen in response. I don’t claim all of the tuition increases have come from the decline in funding but the decline in public funding contributes to the increase. Public colleges are more and more being run like businesses. According to this research, public funding for higher education has declined in response to increased welfare and Medicaid spending.

https://www.educationnext.org/state-funding-public-colleges-...

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"State funding for higher education has declined by roughly a quarter, to $7,152 per student enrolled in a public two- or four-year school in 2015, down from $9,489 per student in 1987."

The article is not in disagreement with the thought that Free Federal Money displaces other sources.

Also, the article does not show why tuition has risen 1200% instead of 30%.

Tuition in the University of California system increased by an infinite percent from 1960 to 1980. It used to be tuition free. Had it remained tuition free it would have been cheaper and better overall for society.

I think many people are for tuition free for a certain amount of people based on merit. However it shouldn't be just a 5th-8th year of high school...like it seems to be becoming. When an admissions rate of a large public university can reach 95%+...we are no longer selecting the best students that will actually gain anything from going to college.

Too many people are going to college but now that colleges are run like a business this isn’t going to change. With declining state support we need more clients and the tuition money they bring.

The UC schools have always tied enrollment to the top 9% of California High School seniors. As High School graduation rates increased, the UC system increased its enrollment (most recently by building a new campus).

Enrollment at UC wouldn't change if it were free -- it will always be ~9% of graduating seniors.

That's great, but certainly not what most people are thinking when they are pushing for "free college".

Sorry, I must be misinterpreting, because I’m he way I read this now, you can’t get into the school system without having gone to HS in California?

The UC system accepts out of state admits but they have always paid full tuition. In state residents get a discount (which used to be 100%).

But they also guarantee that they will admit 9% of state grads.

The 9% merit bar is increasingly being circumvented by students electing to take one or two semesters of community college and take advantage of the 30% transfer rate into the UC system enjoyed by full-time students of those schools.

I don't think there is anything wrong with that. If you can get good enough grades at JC to prove you should have been admitted in the first place, then good on you, eh?

The free federal money existed even before the law being suggested.

It’s not clear why a minor change in mechanics would lead to such a significant change in incentives.

The linked article doesn't say it's constant dollars, that's probably a far bigger change than it looks like.

Also, note that the relationship is non-linear: Suppose it really is constant dollars and constant costs and it really costs $10k/quarter/student and look at the numbers: $511/quarter in 1987, $2,848 in 2015--a 30% drop in funding leads to a 557% increase in tuition.

The CPI tuition number is also quite complicated to calculate:

https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/college-tuition.htm

I can't fully tell here how much of this is the non-linear relationship you identified vs BLS not compensating for all financial aid and other reductions to create an actual net student cost.

The highest paid educator at the private R1 research university I work for makes about $200k, the average director or higher level administrator makes about $350k, while the LOWEST paid athletic coach makes $500k.

I think the blog post might be onto something, but I agree that I don't think it's all of it. My friend and colleague were just talking recently about how something happened around the mid to late 1990s in the US with college, but it's really hard to put one's finger on one thing or even one set of things, or why they changed around the same time. It's like higher ed just started getting insane around then in several different ways, from cost, to funding, to administration, to culture, to everything. Some institutions managed to resist the insanity longer but it seems like it's spreading.

I agree that cuts to public universities are also a big part of it, but that doesn't explain similar trends with private institutions, unless you explain it in terms of "inflation afforded through competitors" that private institutions could accrue. That is, public university funding is cut -> tuition increases at public universities -> private universities can increase tuition by comparison. It seems this would then lead to comparative budget surpluses at private universities though?

There's also a lot of trends that seem to have happened around the same time too that don't have anything directly related to state funding. For example, federal grant funds started ballooning around that same time, and the feeding frenzy on indirect funds and pyramid scheme of grad student funding started coming into play.

I'd love to have a single coherent explanation for why all of this started accelerating together in the late 90s. So far I've just chalked it up to political-administrative culture in the US (healthcare started seeing similar problems around the same time), but I'm open to the idea there's some sort of unidentified sociopoliticoeconomic explanation. I don't think it's just the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 though.

Could be the access to information that the internet brought on. People were able to see data and information much quicker. Perhaps this led to submitting information quicker and having less barriers between someone applying for a loan and getting the loan. This then led to money grabs by every institution and the risks were small since there was always federal backed money available.

Grow bigger, spend more, push the lie that everyone needs to go to college...admissions go up, quality goes down...but they get more money than ever.

Thanks for your well stated response. I agree with the sentiments and beliefs. Nicely put.

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