Don't Blame State Disinvestment Alone

Iris Palmer was quoted in Inside Higher Ed about state disinvestment in higher education:

She pointed out that the Cato study uses two different calculations finding either 57 percent or 68 percent of annual tuition increases can be explained by drops in state and local appropriations:

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“They sort of treat it as a not-high percentage,” Palmer said. “It seems to me, if state disinvestments are driving over 50 percent of public tuition increases, that’s a pretty big explanation.”

Palmer co-wrote a November paper that projected how a future recession would affect higher education finances. Only a handful of states would be able to keep per-student tuition below the current national average of about $6,000 if a recession hits within the next five years, it found.