Crisis In Public Higher Education

By Gwendolyn Bradley, Gregory S. Brown, and Nsé Ufot

Despite much rhetoric about the need to regain US leadership in higher education and boost the economy by educating more students, higher education across the nation is facing steep reductions in federal and state funding. And although in many cases institutions are able to make up the difference from other funding sources, the withdrawal of public support for higher education is troubling, as it transfers the cost of education to students, often in the form of student debt, and to corporations, whose funding often has strings attached. According to a report by the National Conference of State Legislators, tuition is now more than 37 percent of total higher education revenue, as opposed to less than 25 percent in fiscal year 1984. And according to a survey conducted by the Project on Student Debt, college seniors who graduated in 2009 carried an average of $24,000 in student-loan debt, up 6 percent from the previous year; at the same time, unemployment among recent college graduates is rising.

Continued at: http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/academe/2011/MJ/nb/crisishe.htm