The state of higher education funding in the U.S. was recently described in a carefully documented report released in February. The report comes from a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded organization with the somewhat wonky title, State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO).

What it tells us about education spending in this country is discouraging. Not only does U.S. higher education funding have a long way to go — there’s no obvious way to get there.

The Stock Market May Be Soaring (But Education Spending Continues to Lag Behind)

One of the first things that will likely strike you about the report is that despite the impressive national recovery from the 2008 “Great Recession,” U.S. education spending is lower in 2018 than it was in the midst of the slump. The average amount spent per pupil in 2018 was $7,853. This is 11.2% lower than in 2008 and represents about a $1,000 per pupil shortfall.

It isn’t just a matter of state legislatures being slow to respond. If that were the case, recent educational appropriations would reflect that. Instead — one instance among many — higher education appropriations in 2018 were flat. As the report documents, “Ten years out from the start of the Great Recession, per-student higher education appropriations in the U.S. have only halfway recovered.”

Another discouraging aspect of the report is what it tells us about where the money for higher education funding is coming from. Only one source has significantly increased its share of education funding since 2008, and that’s tuition revenue. To be clear, the 373% increase in tuition revenue from 2008 to 2018 means that more students are paying for their educations out of personal resources and family funds than ever before, a situation exacerbated by a decade of sharp tuition increases.

The SHEEO report notes, on the other hand, that states have not increased their contributions; as tuitions have increased — in 2018 states contributed nearly $2,000 less per student than in 2001. Tuition payments, in contrast, have increased by 86% in the last 25 years. Basically, that burden falls on families.

This Is What Inequality Looks Like

The SHEEO report also compares state higher education appropriations state by state. In Oklahoma and West Virginia, two states hit particularly hard by demographic shifts in the age of technology, appropriations have declined sharply — Oklahoma’s are down nearly 20%, with West Virginia not far behind.

There’s no reason to believe this situation will improve in the near future. As the New York Times reported in 2017, a new study in Science shows that Southern states in general will suffer disproportionately from climate change, while states in the Northeast and West will not. Maine’s fiscal situation may actually improve as climate changes bring warmer winter weather.

The ways in which states’ fortunes have varied and will continue to vary from changes in technology and weather is a large subject, of course. But, in general, Western states like California and Oregon have increased their educational appropriations over this same 10-year period — Oregon’s is up by 47% — while Southern and predominantly rural or farming states or sharply down. There’s no easy way to increase those appropriations — avoiding further declines will be tough enough.

Pensioners vs. Students

One of the problems underlying higher-education appropriation declines is the significant increase in state pension funding over the same period in nearly every state. As legislators well know, state-employee pensions are the third rail of state funding.

A legislator foolish (or idealistic) enough to introduce legislation that would ask retired state workers (most of them in relatively strong unions) to share some of the revenue currently earmarked for education funding for education initiatives would soon be out of office. In many states, reducing state pension and retiree health benefits is against the law.

An Inconclusive Conclusion

When journalists tackle big social problems, they often have a concluding paragraph or two that holds out hope for positive change — or, at the least, makes a few recommendations that might lead to improvement.

In this instance, as a journalist and former college professor, I don’t have much hope to offer. A couple of the aspirants for the Democratic presidential nomination have laid out ambitious plans that would significantly shift the landscape described above, putting more of the education-funding burden on the wealthiest Americans and less on students and their families.

But they’ve also been widely condemned for these “unrealistic” proposals. Yes, positive changes can come from nowhere and suddenly a crisis has disappeared. But in this instance, my best guess is that we’re going to be stuck with inadequate higher education funding for the foreseeable future and that the burden will fall much harder on some than on others. How hard it falls depends on where you live.