Richard K Vedder, Columnist

Will State Colleges Become Federal Universities?

November 27, 2012 at 11:40 PM UTC

Richard Vedder, an economist, directs the Center for College Affordability and Productivity and teaches at Ohio University. He is an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

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Get public-university presidents together, and they start complaining about the diminishing amount of subsidy support from their state governments.

A review of historical data shows that from the early 1980s until the year before the recent financial crisis, inflation-adjusted state funding per student was essentially unchanged. Over the last generation, an academic arms race has considerably increased total spending per student, so as a percentage of university budgets, state appropriations have sharply fallen.