By Judy Putnam
Michigan’s economic woes have hit state support for higher education hard this decade. The state sliced per-pupil support by more than 16 percent between 2000-01 and 2007-08, dropping from an average of $6,853 to $5,719, according to the House Fiscal Agency, a nonpartisan legislative budget analysis group.
During the same time period, per pupil tuition revenue (including out-of-state and graduate-level tuition) jumped 78 percent, from $6,367 to $11,339.
Overall, total revenue generated by tuition and state funding grew by 3.7 percent a year. That’s less than 3.9 percent inflation for the period as measured by Higher Education Price Index, an alternative measure of inflation geared to higher education, according to the House Fiscal Agency. But students shouldered all of the increase plus more to make up for the loss in state support.
National studies rank Michigan below average in affordability.
Measuring Up 2008, a national report card on higher education by San Jose, Calif.-based National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, ranked Michigan 35th among the states for affordability.
It found that the average Michigan family must pay 34 percent of its income to cover tuition at a public four-year, compared with the national average of 28 percent of family income.
Michigan also ranks low on aid to low-income students in the study, awarding just 28 cents for every $1 in federal Pell Grant awards for low-income students in Michigan. In comparison, Indiana, a state that has a strong needs-based program, awards 84 cents for every $1 in Pell.
According to the Delta Project on Postsecondary Costs, a Washington D.C. policy group, Michigan students must carry a much bigger share of the cost of education than the national average.
Even after financial aid is considered, students attending Michigan’s seven institutions considered to be research universities paid 63 percent of the cost of education in 2006, up from 49 percent just four years earlier. Nationally, students in 2006 paid 51 percent of costs of to attend public research universities.
