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Higher Education Starved for Tax Dollars?

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Here’s a letter that I just sent to the Washington Post:

University of Virginia history professor Elizabeth Thompson says that “state funding has plummeted” for public universities (Letters [2], Jan. 18).

The facts say otherwise.  Data from Illinois State University’s Center for the Study of Education Policy show that from 1994 to 2008 inflation-adjusted state tax appropriations to higher education rose by 32 percent.  And if we go back to the heyday of the “anti-tax movements” that Ms. Thompson blames for the alleged starvation of public colleges and universities, we find that higher education receives, in inflation-adjusted dollars, 53 percent more state funding today than it did in 1981.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux

I calculated these figures from data found here [3] (and using the Minneapolis Fed’s inflation calculator [4] to adjust for changes in the value of the dollar over these time periods).

What about on a per-student-enrolled basis?  It appears that Ms. Thompson still has her history wrong.

2007 is the latest year for which I can find reliable data on students enrolled in higher education in the U.S [5].

In 2007, enrollment in public universities was 21.2 percent higher than it was in 1994 (while inflation-adjusted funding in 2008 was 32.0 percent higher than it was in 1994).

In 2007, enrollment in public universities was 39.8 percent higher than it was in 1981 (while inflation-adjusted funding in 2008 was 53.1 percent higher than it was in 1981).

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