Dollars and Sense: Analysis of Spending and Revenue Patterns to Inform Fiscal Planning for California Higher Education
After decades of focusing on expansion and access, California’s institutions of higher education are now being handed a more difficult charge: to dramatically increase the number of college graduates with diminishing state funding. There is a growing consensus that the United States needs to ratchet up its production of college graduates to turn around the economy and remain competitive. California’s performance is vital to this national agenda. Experts warn that California needs to start on a steep upward climb—each year issuing about 16,000 college degrees more than the year before—until one million additional Californians have postsecondary degrees.
The standard approach that California’s policymakers take toward financing higher education is not up to this challenge. For decades, state leaders have been relatively content to leave the higher education system on autopilot, guided by a 1960 Master Plan that offers no guidance for dividing resources among the three systems to produce desired levels of education, for defining affordability, for determining whether students in different segments should pay different amounts or shares of cost, or for determining what quality education should cost in each segment. Fiscal planning is not well-informed by systematic analysis of spending and revenue patterns and is not guided by a vision of what outcomes are sought from postsecondary education and how resources can best be allocated to achieve them.
This project uses data from a national initiative to illustrate the kinds of analysis that could better inform fiscal planning. The Delta Project on Postsecondary Education Costs, Productivity, and Accountability is a national initiative designed to help decision makers adopt more rational funding approaches for higher education. We use their data to draw comparisons across California’s three public systems of higher education, explain noteworthy changes over time, and discuss how California compares to the rest of the nation. As data extend only to 2009, we cannot document the most recent trends, but the seven-year trends we document provide a useful context for future planning.
via Institute for Higher Education Leadership & Policy | Download the Full Report
