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States Shrink and Shift Higher Education Costs to Families

Charlene Crowell
The Washington Informer

As the nation’s trillion-dollar student debt continues to rise, a new analysis of public higher education’s funding finds dwindling state support is the key factor driving rising tuition costs and deepening student debt. According to Demos, a public policy organization advocating economic opportunity and inclusive democracy, over the last two decades state support for higher education funding shifted to a new paradigm.

As government support of higher education dwindled, public institutions raised tuition costs to recover those lost funds. These increases occurred at both four-year and two-year public institutions. And in that process, families were handed a larger financial burden to fund their children’s college education.

“The shift from a collective funding of higher education to one borne increasingly by individuals”, states the report “has come at the very same time that low-and-middle-income households experienced stagnant or declining household income.”

Read the report: The Great Cost Shift Continues: State Higher Education Funding After the Recession