The situation is more acute at public institutions.

Forbes reports.

College Students Are Paying More, But Many Schools Are Spending Less On Them

For the past 30 years, U.S. colleges and universities have been increasing tuition costs by 2% to 5% per year. But that doesn’t mean all those dollars are allocated for increased school spending on student education. Despite the tuition hikes, education spending is flat or falling at many public and private institutions. With revenue streams like state subsidies drying up, colleges aren’t relying as heavily on those means to pay for the cost of education—they’re making students and families pay for more of it themselves.

The percent of subsidies spent on education declined through the 2000s and hit a decade-low in 2011, according to government data collected by the Delta Cost Project, a non-profit, non-partisan organization that performs yearly studies of education spending.

The situation appears to be more acute at public schools than private ones, Delta Cost Project data from 2002 to 2012 suggests. On average, private institutions are increasing their education spending along with the tuition hikes, but not so at public institutions. While students are paying more for their education, public colleges and universities are spending less money on them—less bang for more buck. One reason public schools are relying more heavily on students to pay for their own education can, in part, be traced back to the 2008 recession.

“States knew that higher education does have another source of revenue—students—compared to lots of [other] functions of the state like prisons and roads,” says Donna Desrochers, deputy director of the Delta Cost Project.


 
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