Trends in the News
Across the country, state fiscal support for higher education grew by just 1.6 percent, according to the Grapevine survey, which provides an early look each year at states’ funding for higher education. That was down sharply from a 4.2 percent increase last year and represents the lowest annual growth in the last five years.
The financial lives of college students and universities took center stage this year in ways few could imagine. Higher education captured the attention of Congress with the sweeping Republican tax plan, resulting in an unprecedented move on college endowments. State authorities tangled with the new administration over the rollback of rules governing federal financial aid. And the nascent tuition-free movement gained momentum as New York joined the cause. These are among the influential events that shaped the economics of higher education in 2017.
A long-awaited bill to overhaul the nation’s higher education law would change how students obtain federal student aid, place new limits on that financial aid, and eliminate current federal language governing teacher preparation, among other notable shifts.
If high schoolers can get a jump on college credits, state lawmakers figure the state will save big later when those same kids get to college and need fewer classes to gain a degree. But here’s the problem: Our recent cost analysis in three states reveals that dual enrollment yielded no state savings at all, though they did lower students’ direct costs for earning the same credit.
The trend has persisted. One recent report found that, since 2002, state support for higher education in Michigan has declined 30 percent, when adjusted for inflation. The university, like nearly every other state school in the nation, leaned on tuition to make up the difference. In-state tuition rose, but university leaders also focused on another, more lucrative, funding stream: out-of-state students — many of them elite students from wealthy families who couldn’t get into the Ivy League. Michigan was the next best thing.
In its annual survey of four-year colleges and universities, the credit rating agency said private institutions project net tuition revenue — the money earned from students after colleges provide financial aid — will climb about 2.4 percent in fiscal 2018. Meanwhile, public universities anticipate a 2 percent growth rate during that period due to pricing constraints and shifting demographics. Moody’s polled a total of 280 of the colleges and universities it rates for the survey.
Two years ago, Folsom Lake College began a partnership with the city of Rancho Cordova to provide a fee waiver for residents who were recent high school graduates. Funding comes from a half-cent sales tax levied by the city. The program, still in its first cohort of students, is overwhelmingly popular, Robinson said, and student success rates are up as well.
States could save money and increase college-graduation rates by providing modest financial incentives for students to choose private colleges over comparable public ones, according to a report released this week. The conclusion, which was quickly disputed by a group representing public colleges, comes at a time when a growing number of states are providing the opposite incentives.
Much has been written about the broken business model of higher education, focusing on rising costs, ever-higher tuition, and mounting student debt. However, an increasingly important but rarely discussed issue is the weakening of the traditional partnership between universities (both public and private) and private philanthropic foundations.
After an enrollment dip earlier this decade, however, UMUC has begun a process of unbundling, paring the institution down to what President Javier Miyares calls its “academic core” to monetize its own services, grow its endowment and keep tuition rates low.