RI Students Have Third-Largest Tuition Burden in US
Thursday, March 07, 2013
RI students paid nearly double the country's average tuition amount in 2012 ... all while receiving significantly less state aid.
And those results are just a part of a growing national trend which has seen tuition at public colleges skyrocket by almost 20 percent over the last five years while state government aid is down 23.1 percent over the same time period.
In fact, the average amount that students across the country paid for tuition at public colleges rose by a total of 8.3 percent from 2011 to 2012 which, according to the SHEEO, is the biggest jump on record.
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"The depth of the 2008 recession and the economy’s slow recovery are reflected in the funding, enrollment, and net tuition numbers for 2012,” said Paul Lingenfelter, president of SHEEO. “Tuition revenues are up substantially due to higher prices and more enrollments, but not enough to offset losses of public funding. Students are paying more, while public institutions are receiving substantially less money to educate them.”
Lingenfelter called the change from 2011 to 2012 particularly noteworthy.
“These one-year decreases in funding and increases in student costs are unprecedented over my forty-year career in higher education,” he said.
RI’s Enrollment Rises
As is common during difficult economic times, enrollment in higher education has seen a large increase both in Rhode Island and nationwide over the past five years.
According to the State Higher Education Finance FY 2012 Report, the number of full-time equivalent students enrolled in public higher education facilities ballooned 15 percent nationwide, from 9.9 million in FY2007 to 11.5 million last year.
Since the year 2000, total enrollment in the US has risen by 34.2 percent.
In Rhode Island, meanwhile, a total of 31,729 students were enrolled at one of the state’s schools, which is an increase of 9.7 percent since 2007.
State Support Falls
While the enrollment figures both statewide and nationwide could be heralded as a positive trend since a larger number of students are pursuing higher education than ever before, the lack of state government and local support over the same period of time means students are being tasked with taking on larger and larger shares of their tuition costs each year.
In the past five years, the average educational appropriations per full time student dropped nationwide from $7,667 to $5,896. That amount is down nearly 10 percent alone since 2011.
In Rhode Island, meanwhile, the average student receives $5,226 in state and local support, a number that is surprisingly up 9.9 percent since 2011 but down a total of 19.6 percent since 2007.
Tuition Costs Keep Increasing
The most interesting aspect of the SHEEO report, however, is a look at the average tuition costs for students state-to-state.
Over the past five years, tuition costs have risen 19.1 percent from a 2007 mark of $4,359 per student to a $5,189 average per student last year.
Rhode Island students, meanwhile, pay nearly double the average tuition costs of their national counterparts as the most recent data shows costs in the Ocean State have risen to an average of $10,005 per year. That number is a slight increase of 2.8 percent from 2011 but a whopping 26.6 percent higher than it was back in 2007 when the average tuition rate stood at $7,904.
Perhaps most distressing for students in the Ocean State is the fact that, in 2012, they paid more than students in every other state except Delaware, where the average tuition is $12,330, and Vermont, where students pay an average of $11,939.
Marshall Hill, chair of SHEEO’s Executive Committee and Executive Director of the Nebraska Coordinating Commission said it’s imperative that government officials begin taking a serious look at the trends in higher education.
“Public higher education in the United States enrolls more than 70% of all postsecondary students,” he said. “The accessibility and quality of public higher education will largely determine the competitiveness of the U.S. workforce for the next half century and the ability of our people to meet the challenges of citizenship in an increasingly complex world. Other countries are rapidly improving the postsecondary education of their citizens; if the United States falls further behind in either quality or the number of students who enroll and graduate it will not be easy to catch up."
To see the full report, click here.
