By JAKE JARVIS
Charleston Gazette-Mail
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — West Virginia spent 22.4 percent less on higher education this year than it spent at the beginning of the Great Recession, according to a report from a left-leaning national think tank.
That equates to the state spending about $1,980 less per student in the 2016-17 school year than it did in the 2007-08 school year, the report said.
The report, published Wednesday by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, looks at how cuts to state funding of public colleges has driven up the cost of paying for a college degree. The report’s authors describe the period it studied as “a lost decade in higher education funding.”
“More young people could afford to go and graduate from college if states reverse their near decade of declining support for community colleges and public universities,” said Michael Mitchell, the center’s senior policy analyst, in a news conference Tuesday.
West Virginia was one of just 13 states to cut funding for higher education this year, the report said. Adjusting for inflation, the report said tuition has gone up about 47 percent since 2008.
In states with large cuts to higher education funding, more federal student aid dollars tend to flow into the state, Mitchell said. Those federal dollars — which can come in the form of federally subsidized loans or the Pell Grant — have not kept pace with rate of decrease, suggesting a greater proportion of the cost of attendance has shifted onto the student to cover, Mitchell said.
Sean O’Leary, the interim director of West Virginia’s Center on Budget and Policy, said cuts to higher education funding are directly tied to tuition increases.
“This is something that legislatures understand,” O’Leary said. “It’s part of the reason why, when they do make cuts to the budget, they go after higher education — because of the understanding the schools can raise tuition. They can’t do that with K-12.”
All but two public colleges in the state increased their tuition and fees this years, according to data from the state agencies charged with overseeing the two- and four-year colleges. Glenville State College and Mountwest Community and Technical College both kept their tuition and fees the same this year as they were last year.
The rest of the state’s public colleges increased tuitions from as little as 2 percent to as much as 9 percent.
In previous years, either the Higher Education Policy Commission or the Council for Community and Technical College Education would need to approve a tuition increase over five percent. The new law allows schools to enact a tuition increase of up to 10 percent in a single year, or 21 percent over three years (averaging 7 percent a year).
“If we want to increase economic activity in West Virginia, if we want to build a strong economy, all of that depends on high quality, affordable public higher education,” O’Leary said. “The benefit of a college education has never been more important in the economy.”
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