No Frills (Including Fact Checkers)

Newspapers are hard hit during these financial times. They're simultaneously cutting staff and raising workloads, so I can understand if a few stories go uncovered. But apparently they're cutting back on fact checkers, too, at least at the Christian Science Monitor. Here's a quote from an article yesterday on no-frills higher education:

A main factor driving up tuition at public universities is the reduction in state funding. In the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, for instance, appropriations per student slid 20 percent in the past decade, says chancellor John Cavanaugh. During the same period, however, the system found ways to save, so tuition went up just 16 percent.

This is an oft-repeated line, but it's not really true nationally or in this case. The Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education's 2007-8 Fact Book shows why. Some quick math from Table C.2 finds that in-state undergraduate tuition, fees, room and board increased from $8,089 to $13,184 between 1997-8 and 2007-8, a 63 percent rise (if you focus on tuition only, as Cavanaugh did, it would lower the percent to 49.3, still far higher than the 20 percent quoted by the chancellor). Compare that to Table G.1, which shows that system appropriations per student actually increased by two percent over the same ten-year period. The state was not overly generous, sure, but for every additional student that enrolled, it provided additional funds to compensate. The national trend tells a similar story: in constant dollars per student, at public four-year institutions between 1983 and 2008, tuition more than doubled while state appropriations were up about nine percent.