Dive Brief:
- A new report from Pew Charitable Trust shows the federal government contributed an increasingly large share of higher education funding from 2000 through 2012, paying more than half starting in 2010.
- The Chronicle of Higher Education reports per-student state funding declined for much of the research period while federal funding grew, largely spurred on by higher Pell payments to more students.
- State-by-state comparisons show a range in per-student funding levels from the federal government with Hawaii getting three times more than New Jersey, according to the article.
Dive Insight:
The report looked at federal student aid grants like Pell, benefits to veterans, and research grants to universities. As The Chronicle reports, it did not include student loan spending or assign a value to education tax credits. A particularly illustrative graph in the Pew report shows falling state funding, on a per-student basis, starting in late 2001 with sharp declines from then until 2005 and from mid-2008, during the recession, to 2012. While the actual dollar spending has not gone down so sharply, the per-student spending dropped as states failed to tie their appropriation levels with rising enrollment at colleges and universities.