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> Please point me to the majority of representatives getting elected on platforms of raising taxes for education. Democrats may retake Congress in the fall.

> Please point me to the majority of representatives getting elected on platforms of raising taxes for education. Democrats may retake Congress in the fall. > Tuition is a direct proxy for college funding (think of it as student funding rather than public funding). I meant it to show that increasing funding for colleges does not equate with improving outcomes for most students. I see what you mean. AFAIK, tuition increases have been closely correlated with public funding cuts, so overall funding may not be increasing. I have wondered though: Students pay X times as much as they did 20 years ago; are they getting something better? Unfortunately, that's not how market pricing works; as the U.S. has tried to expose everything to market forces (including people's health!), higher education prices seem to be based on supply and demand, and demand for something so essential is highly inelastic.

mdorazio 8y ago
I'd love to see it happen, but keep in mind that not all democrats are gung-ho about raising taxes for things like education (or cutting spending in other areas). I'm trying to find total funding numbers for public universities and am coming up short on nicely formatted nation-wide data. However, it looks like in CA, UC per-student public funding dropped from $23,000 to $8,000 from the late 70s to 2017 [1]. In the same time period, tuition went up from $630 (in 1976 dollars) to $12,630 last year. I can't find comprehensive information on the third big component of funding - alumni donations, but at UC Berkeley they have been growing significantly year over year for at least 7 years [2]. States are very different in how they fund schools, though. For example, Texas has a sovereign wealth fund that generates a huge amount of money. In Massachusetts, tuition growth outpaced per-student funding cuts over the last 15 years - look at chart 7 in [3]. Anecdotally, it seems like total funding is going up with tuition, but the money is going towards things like student annexes, stadiums, ancillary faculty salaries, etc. that generally have little to no impact on education outcomes. [1 worth reading - some interesting data] http://www.ppic.org/publication/higher-education-funding-in-california/ http://www.ppic.org/publication/higher-education-funding-in-... [2] http://www.dailycal.org/2016/07/17/uc-berkeley-receives-record-number-alumni-donations-year/ http://www.dailycal.org/2016/07/17/uc-berkeley-receives-reco... [3] http://massbudget.org/report_window.php?loc=higher-education-funding-in-massachusetts.html http://massbudget.org/report_window.php?loc=higher-education...
- forapurpose 8y ago
  Thanks. Here's an overview of the debate about the correlation between funding cuts and tuition increases: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/07/24/new-study-attempts-show-how-much-state-funding-cuts-push-tuition https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/07/24/new-study-att... > money is going towards things like student annexes, stadiums, ancillary faculty salaries, etc. that generally have little to no impact on education outcomes I fear (I don't know) that's just another claim by the right to support funding and tax cuts. That is their goal in every situation, AFAICT.

mdorazio 8y ago

I'd love to see it happen, but keep in mind that not all democrats are gung-ho about raising taxes for things like education (or cutting spending in other areas). I'm trying to find total funding numbers for public universities and am coming up short on nicely formatted nation-wide data. However, it looks like in CA, UC per-student public funding dropped from $23,000 to $8,000 from the late 70s to 2017 [1]. In the same time period, tuition went up from $630 (in 1976 dollars) to $12,630 last year. I can't find comprehensive information on the third big component of funding - alumni donations, but at UC Berkeley they have been growing significantly year over year for at least 7 years [2]. States are very different in how they fund schools, though. For example, Texas has a sovereign wealth fund that generates a huge amount of money. In Massachusetts, tuition growth outpaced per-student funding cuts over the last 15 years - look at chart 7 in [3]. Anecdotally, it seems like total funding is going up with tuition, but the money is going towards things like student annexes, stadiums, ancillary faculty salaries, etc. that generally have little to no impact on education outcomes. [1 worth reading - some interesting data] http://www.ppic.org/publication/higher-education-funding-in-california/ http://www.ppic.org/publication/higher-education-funding-in-... [2] http://www.dailycal.org/2016/07/17/uc-berkeley-receives-record-number-alumni-donations-year/ http://www.dailycal.org/2016/07/17/uc-berkeley-receives-reco... [3] http://massbudget.org/report_window.php?loc=higher-education-funding-in-massachusetts.html http://massbudget.org/report_window.php?loc=higher-education...

forapurpose 8y ago
Thanks. Here's an overview of the debate about the correlation between funding cuts and tuition increases: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/07/24/new-study-attempts-show-how-much-state-funding-cuts-push-tuition https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/07/24/new-study-att... > money is going towards things like student annexes, stadiums, ancillary faculty salaries, etc. that generally have little to no impact on education outcomes I fear (I don't know) that's just another claim by the right to support funding and tax cuts. That is their goal in every situation, AFAICT.