Report Provides States with Guidance for Higher Education

Faced with either budget cuts or increases in 2004, states should give the highest priority to helping students enroll in and complete postsecondary education. This, and other recommendations by the independent National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, can help states attempting to grapple with fast-growing young adult populations and those that face a third consecutive year of flat or declining appropriations for higher education. In 2003-04, 23 states made cuts to their higher education budgets.

Finance Contact: Kristin Conklin
Education Division

http://www.nga.org/center/frontAndCenter/1,1188,C_FRONT_CENTER%5ED_6436,00.html

Specifically, states that must cut higher education funding in 2004 are encouraged to:

* Protect higher education funding from disproportionate cuts, such as Governor Easley has done in North Carolina.

* Increase or at least maintain funding for need-based state financial aid programs, such as California did in 2003-04.

* Temporarily freeze tuition at community colleges and public four-year colleges that predominantly serve low- to middle-income families. Maine’s community college system agreed to tuition freezes for the last five years.

As a whole, these recommendations support a subtle shift of state support for public higher education toward instruction of undergraduates, which is a strategy for increasing productivity.

* Responding to the Crisis in College Opportunity http://www.highereducation.org/reports/crisis/