Higher Education Cuts Risk Damaging State Economies For Years To Come: CBPP Report

States chose to enact deep cuts to public higher education funding instead of raising taxes, potentially harming both state economies and education quality, a new report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities finds.

The CBPP, a left-leaning economic think tank that focuses on state and federal budgets, found that states are spending, on average, 28 percent less per student in fiscal year 2013 than they were in 2008. Consequently, tuition at four-year public colleges has grown 27 percent since the 2007-08 year, though the report notes some states have increased tuition by considerably more. In the cases of Arizona and California, tuition at public universities has gone up by more than 70 percent over the same period. The decline in state appropriations has forced public colleges to rely more student tuition to pay for the cost of education, the report concluded.