A Shift in the Perception of Higher Education: The Decline of Public Support
Shift in the Perception of Higher Education
What was for decades the key to achieving prosperity has slipped from our grip and begun to beat down on the groups that so greatly benefited from it before. We have entered an era of decreased funding for public higher education, less autonomy for those institutions, and diminishing cultural satisfaction toward the positive externalities that they provide. It is vital that we understand why this happened if we are to have any chance to reverse course.
![Higher Education [1]](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/805d47_b491696dfdda43bbb415b7d39a1f7db3~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_745,h_400,al_c,q_80,enc_auto/805d47_b491696dfdda43bbb415b7d39a1f7db3~mv2.jpg)
In the immediate postwar era we saw a drastic increase in the number of students able to better themselves through academia. State support for higher education was considered a positive aspect of our budget until around 1980 when politicians began to champion ideas of lower taxes while ignoring the rising cost of the entitlements that were created in the decades prior. Dr. Matthew Filipic, the former Vice Chancellor for Administration at the Ohio Board of Regents and the former Senior Vice President for Business and Fiscal Affairs at Wright State University, discusses the conversation in Ohio during this time.
“In 1982 the bottom fell out of the State budget. We had 13% unemployment for over one year; we had a whole series of budget cuts, one after another, it was a nightmare. When we came out of that, we still had the same formula, but higher education funding was no longer an entitlement. Instead of having the formula determine what would be paid out, the State would say how much they had to offer and allocate from that end; asking the schools to cover the rest with tuition.”[2]
With the shifting perceptions of higher education coming to fruition during the 1980s coupled with an economy that was struggling to shift from manufacturing to service, state budgets began to de-prioritize higher education.[3] Because public higher education had alternate revenue streams (tuition & federally funded grants), the defunding of higher education was inevitable. Although state support for higher education went up in absolute terms, it did not keep up with inflation or increases in enrollment.[4]
![State Funding v Tuition [5]](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/805d47_34010d016c2147d9af252e81e0c48a47~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_400,h_259,al_c,q_85,enc_auto/805d47_34010d016c2147d9af252e81e0c48a47~mv2.png)
State Support v. Tuition [5]
Today, higher education continues to battle with the same philosophy. In a recent Gallup Poll citizens overwhelmingly stated that they valued higher education but less than two in five strongly agreed that it should be subsidized by the State.[6] States continue to provide less support for higher education and according to Tom Mortenson, a higher-education policy analyst at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education, “if the spending trends from 1980 through [2015] continue—state aid for higher education in Colorado will reach zero within a decade and 15 other states’ spending on colleges would reach zero by 2050.”[7] The American public university, so praised across the globe for its accessibility and opportunity granting ability, will not exist as it did in the twentieth century, and might not exist at all as we approach the twenty-second century.
“The unwritten pact between society and higher education that provided expanding resources in return for greater access for students as well as research and service to society has broken down, with significant implications for both higher education and society.”[8]
Next Week's Post: Higher Education Funding Models in Ohio
Sources:
[1] http://www.ncsl.org/research/education/higher-education.aspx
[2] Filipic, Matt. Interview with Lukas Wenrick. Personal Interview. (Dayton, February 14, 2017).
[3] Hebel, Sara. “From Public Good to Private Good: How Higher Education Got to a Tipping Point.” Washington, D.C., The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2014).
[4] Ibid.
[5] http://budgetandpolicy.org/reports/declining-support-for-education-threatens-economic-growth
[6] Hebel. Public Good to Private Good.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Bastedo, Altbach, Gumport. Higher Education in the Twenty-first Century, 15.
About the Author:
Lukas Wenrick spends his days working to develop innovative solutions to the most complex issues universities face. He does so to ensure that the most marginalized students may pursue an alternative trajectory than the one laid out by their zip code. He believes that universities and other educational enterprises have the duty to expand educational opportunity to as many individuals as possible and that excellence should be judged by the students that an institution includes, rather than those that it excludes.
Lukas holds a Master's of Education in Higher Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a Bachelor of Arts in Social Science Education from Wright State University. His experiences at both an open access public university and an elite private institution inform the work he does every day. Currently, Lukas serves as a University Innovation Fellow at Arizona State University where he works to leverage the ASU enterprise to resolve educational and social inequities in the world.
If you'd like to know more about Lukas you can find him on the following sites:
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