<p>The data about the state funding cuts for major public universities are easy to find, but the relative impact on each school can be quite different. Some schools (like Colorado) don't get a lot of money percentage-wise from the state government to begin with. Other schools (like Buffalo) may be very dependent on the state funding.</p>
<p>Does anyone know an online source that shows the percentage of each state flagship's budget that is funded by the state government? For example, I think Penn State's number is going from 10% to 5%. It's a 50% cut or a 5% cut, depending on how you look at it.</p>
<p>Here is the grapevine study:</p>
<p>[Grapevine</a> - Home](<a href=“http://grapevine.illinoisstate.edu/]Grapevine”>http://grapevine.illinoisstate.edu/)</p>
<p>I know there is another report that came out a few weeks ago, but I will leave it to the other CC’ers who live for the numbers.</p>
<p><a href=“http://grapevine.illinoisstate.edu/tables/FY12/Revised_March13/Table%202%20Revised.pdf[/url]”>http://grapevine.illinoisstate.edu/tables/FY12/Revised_March13/Table%202%20Revised.pdf</a></p>
<p>The link above is to a table that shows the percentage reductions in funding by each state for higher education. It is one table from the “Grapevine study” that is discussed above.</p>
<p>Thanks for the input so far, but I’m still looking. As I said, it’s easy to find out how much the states are spending and how much they are cutting, in dollar amount as well in percentage of change. But that’s not the percentage I’m looking for. I’m looking for the percentage of the school budget, for each state flagship school, that is funded by the state.</p>
<p>For example, from an old Chicago Sun-Times article, “Most flagship universities received from 20 percent to 40 percent of their funding from their states, but the range of support was broad. On the high end of the funding spectrum, Louisiana State at Baton Rouge averaged 55 percent, followed by the State University of New York at Buffalo (48.2 percent) and University of Wyoming at Laramie (46.6 percent). On the low end, the University of Colorado at Boulder averaged 6.9 percent, followed by the University of Vermont at Burlington (9.6 percent) and Pennsylvania State University (10.7 percent).”</p>
<p>Where did these numbers come from? Does anyone know a source for the latest figures? I know Penn State is heading to 5%.</p>
<p>People play with these numbers for political purposes. The budget cutters talk about state funds as a percentage of total spending by a university. That includes research, golf courses, residence halls, medical centers, dining services, etc. That is deceitful because it includes categories of expenditure that are supposed to be self-supporting. The relevant number is the percentage of the academic budget that is funded by the state. To be accurate, you also should back out out of state students, who are not typically subsidized by state funds. At some schools, such as Penn State’s main campus, one-third of students are out-of-state. </p>
<p>Pitt’s alumni association and Penn State each have websites with some recent detailed numbers on state funding as a percentage of their academic budgets.</p>
<p>I’ve seen some comparisons that were prepared by individual universities to show how they compare with their peers. UNC-Chapel Hill was one of the best funded universities by their state, while Penn State and Pitt were among the lowest funded. University of Virginia also receives a lower than average funding from the state, but that is made up by their $5 billion endowment.</p>
<p>Rutgers is proposed to receive 5 times as much funding per student from the state as Penn State.</p>
<p>Yeah, we have been told that Penn State and Pitt are not “true state schools”. Schools like West Chester and Kutztown are the real PA state schools.</p>
<p>Anyway, my quest was prompted by some state flagships’ posturing to go private. Schools with low state funding, high endowment, and high percentage of OOS students can make a strong case.</p>
<p>I don’t think any public university really wants to go private. However, some states seem to be pushing them in that direction. </p>
<p>If you assume a 5% annual yield from an endowment, a university would need a billion dollars of additional endowment to make up for the loss of a state appropriation per year of $50 million. There aren’t many universities that can afford that. Most flagship universities also know that the average quality of incoming students would decrease if they didn’t offer affordable tuition to in-state students.</p>
<p>What public universities would like is to be given greater flexibility in setting their own financial policies and tuition levels, fewer state mandates, fewer state regulations, and less political interference in return for accepting decreased funding from their state.</p>
<p>[Budget</a> FAQs | Carolina Budget Information | The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill](<a href=“http://universityrelations.unc.edu/budget/content/FAQ.php]Budget”>http://universityrelations.unc.edu/budget/content/FAQ.php)</p>
<p>Gives info about the NC schools. Looks like they (16 UNCs, community colleges) receive 56% of the NC total budget. And over 25% of the the operating budget for the UNC schools is from state aid. And they cuts they have undertaken. Also includes were some of the other money comes from.</p>
<p>Kat</p>
<p>I think many top publics are still leaving lots of money on the table for instate students from higher income families. What are they going to do–go to Michigan for over $35,000 tuition because Indiana is charging them $10,000??? Not that likely. </p>
<p>It is VERY hard to compare schools as the way they report and what they include vary a lot. If the school operates a large hospital or does lots of research it changes the base without much change in state funding one way or the other. Same for sports and other activities that may not be taxpayer supported.</p>
<p>A lot of good points above. I can see how hard it would be to get the kind of data I had in mind. The actual dolloar amount per in-state student may be more useful.</p>