Joe college pays the tab.

• Author: Eckl, Corina
• Position: Includes related article

The nation's public colleges and universities have not escaped the states' budget squeeze. As a result, students are being hit with higher tuition and fees.

Jennifer Wolff, a senior, is financing her own education at Metropolitan State College of Denver. Frequent tuition increases have made her anxious to complete requirements for her bachelor's degree.

"I thought it would be easier to put myself through school," she says. "I never imagined it would be this difficult. I have two jobs, and last fall I had to borrow money from my grandmother. There's no way I could afford to go through another semester if I had to."

Jennifer is one of many students nationally who is feeling the pinch of rising tuition and fees. The principal reason for the increases? Reductions in state funding for higher education that are more severe than ever before.

Over the long run, state support for higher education has kept ahead of inflation, says Edward R. Hines of the Center for Higher Education at Illinois State University. During the 1980s, however, growth rates in state funding began to slow. In FY 1991, they stalled: The aggregate funding level nationally was $39.6 billion, an increase of only 1.4 percent over FY 1990. Funding stayed flat in FY 1992. In FY 1993 appropriations fell to $39.4 billion, $200 million less than two years earlier. Making matters worse, these amounts don't reflect the effects of inflation.

The national data are skewed by 10 big states that in FY 1993 accounted for more than half the total appropriated to higher education. These "megastates" are categorized by the Center for Higher Education as highly populated and industrialized with many colleges and universities and higher education appropriations in excess of $1 billion annually Their appropriations have a substantial impact on the national average. In recent years, growth in funding in the megastates has tended to bring the overall average down, overshadowing any gains higher education has made in smaller states.

Despite gains in a few small states, funding for higher ed is on the skids because most states are under enormous budget pressure. Not only is there less money to go around, factors outside of legislative control are eating up more of the budget. Especially troublesome are federal mandates, court-imposed mandates and spiraling cost increases in Medicaid, corrections and welfare, which monopolize most of the budget.

"The big obstacle for higher education funding is Medicaid," says Colorado Senator Mike Bird. "In 1980 it was 7 percent of Colorado's budget. Now, it's almost 20 percent of the budget and has crowded out other priorities." This scenario isn't unique to Colorado.

As a result, higher education has been squeezed. "Higher education has been the balance wheel in state budgets," says James Mingle, executive director of State Higher Education Executive Officials.

As recently as FY 1989, higher education accounted for 14 percent of the states' total general fund budgets. By FY 1993, these appropriations accounted for only 12.9 percent.

"The long-term trend is that higher education appropriations are becoming a smaller and smaller portion of state budgets," says Mingle. "This fact was obscured in the 1980s by state economic growth, but has been more obvious with the recent recession."

General fund appropriations aren't the only source of revenue for higher education, however. In some states, community colleges receive funds from local property taxes. Student tuition and fees are also part of the resource formula as are grants, contracts and private contributions.

All these sources must be taken into account to measure the total funds available. But because state general funds are the largest single source of support, they stand out as the best measure of what's happening to higher ed's finances.

Competition for state general funds is nothing new, but the battles are uglier as resources become scarcer.

"Everybody's fighting over fewer dollars," says David Longanecker, former executive director of the Colorado Commission on Higher Education. "In any environment where there is simply not enough to go around, people don't want to work together to ration resources. They want to work separately to create advantaged positions. It's not...