Comment by mjn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mjn | Hacker News Reader

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In some state university systems the inflation-adjusted total funding has actually decreased.

For example, the University of California system was budgeted about $2.1 billion in state money in 1990, which is $4.3 billion in 2020 dollars. At the time, there were 9 campuses, serving 125,000 undergraduates, in a state with population 30 million. Fast-forward to 2020, and the system is budgeted $3.9 billion in state funds, which have to cover 10 campuses, serving 225,000 undergraduates, in a state with population 39.5 million.

If state funding had kept pace solely with inflation and state population, not taking into account any above-inflation cost increases, or the increase in percentage of high-school students who go to college, the budget in 2020 ought to be $5.6 billion instead of $3.9 billion, about 45% higher. If it had kept pace with both the number of students and inflation (but still no cost increases), it'd be $7.7 billion, or almost double.

My read of why it's been cut isn't that CA politicians really think the UC isn't worth funding in 2020 like it was in 1990, but more that it's been a victim of convenience in fiscal crises. CA has had a few state budget crunches over the past 30 years, and the annual UC budget is "discretionary spending" and not locked in, so is procedurally easy to cut. It was slashed significantly during both the dot-com crash and the 2008-2012 budget crisis, leaving us with today's lower level of support.

You're cherrypicking by focusing on UC in isolation. Higher education funding in California has gone up from ~5.5 billion to ~16 billion nominal from 1990 to now.

Overall funding has gone up - it was just focused on community colleges at the expense of UC, as it should be to avoid exacerbating economic inequality.

That's true! This thread I thought was about whether tuition at places like UCs has gone up because of cost increases or state funding decreases though. As far as I can tell from the budgets, it's primarily due to per-student state funding decreases, which match almost dollar-for-dollar with tuition hikes. I.e. the UC is hiking tuition to make up for declining per-student state support, not because the UC is spending more per-student to deliver the education (in real terms).

The community college system has been funded more generously, and not coincidentally, hasn't seen the same tuition hikes. You can still get an associate's degree that's almost 100% taxpayer-funded in CA, just no longer a bachelor's. (Cal State is kind of halfway in between, still much more state-funded than the UCs, but not anywhere near the per-student levels of 1990, which is why in-state tuition there is creeping towards $10k.)

> (Cal State is kind of halfway in between, still much more state-funded than the UCs, but not anywhere near the per-student levels of 1990, which is why in-state tuition there is creeping towards $10k.)

This is an interesting observation, as the Cal States are more focused on instruction than UC, which I think helps justify their (and the CCs) better state funding. UC looks like its flush from all the federal research dollars it pulls in, and from running the hospitals, so the Assembly feels it's easier to cut there, than at CalState/CCs, where they don't have the research or hospital money.

A better measure of state support for higher education is the fraction of the state budget devoted to higher education. I suspect that in California, even with the dramatic expansion of access through community colleges and the state university system, a smaller fraction of the state budget supports higher education. Medicaid and prisons are paid for first.

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