Somehow, this isn’t very surprising.

Kellie Woodhouse of Inside Higher Ed reports.

Impact of Pell Surge

Federal spending has surpassed state spending as the main source of public funding in higher education, and the primary reason is a surge in Pell Grants in the last decade.

Federal and state funds have different missions. The majority of state funding is used to fund specific public institutions, whereas federal funding is generally awarded through student aid and research grants. State funding goes primarily to public institutions, while federal funding goes to student at public, private and for-profit colleges, and to researchers at public and private universities.

Historically, state funding has been heftier than federal funding. In the 25 years leading up to 2012, states spent 65 percent more on higher education than the federal government.

Yet that trend has rapidly changed in the past decade.

In 2010 federal funding overtook state funding as the main source of public support for universities and colleges throughout the country, according to a report released Thursday by the Pew Charitable Trusts.

That same year funding for Pell Grants — grants awarded to college students from low-income families — hit an all time high of about $36 billion. In fact, during the five-year period leading up to 2013, Pell funding increased by 72 percent, and funding of college benefits for veterans tripled.

In 2013 the federal government spent nearly $76 billion on higher education, while states spent about $3 billion less, according to the “Federal and State Funding of Higher Education” study. Federal support include nearly $25 billion in research funding obligations, which are paid over a series of years depending on the length of a research project.

“Our biggest surprise was just the shift that we saw in federal and state higher education funding,” said Phil Oliff, a higher education analyst at Pew. “This is a really significant shift in a pretty short period of time.”

Though the federal government now funnels more money to higher education as a whole, states still supply a greater share of funding to public universities. Public colleges educate 68 percent of all students in the U.S., and in 2013 they received an average of 21 percent of their funding from state funds and 16 percent of their funding from the federal government. Tuition and fees also accounted for 21 percent of public university revenue.