I’m an avid (read: obsessive) reader of FiveThirtyEight and when I saw this recent article on the reasons why tuition is increasing I was immediately drawn in. I have no idea how many times in the last four years I’ve been asked why tuition is skyrocketing in the US but it’s a lot. I’m sad to say this, but I haven’t really looked at the data so my answers have been rather uneducated. Nevertheless, I have seen bits of data that say states are pumping less money into universities which means the direct cost to the student has to increase or cost of delivering education has to go down. It looks like my intuition was right on the whole. Check out the table that lists the change in public funding and the change in tuition costs state by state.
Some quick analysis:
- Three states (North Dakota, Alaska, and Wyoming) show an increase in state funding from 2000 – 2014.
- Of the remaining 47 states, 17 have per-student state funding that is greater than the increase in tuition.
- On average, reductions in state funding are “responsible” for 83.3% of tuition increases.
- There is huge variability in the data – the (population) standard deviation is 41.1% or nearly half of the mean.
Here is a quick and dirty static map of the 48 contiguous states I made.
You can get the data in Excel format here.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fancy-dorms-arent-the-main-reason-tuition-is-skyrocketing/