Quote Originally Posted by Kirkland Laing View Post
Quote Originally Posted by VictorCharlie View Post
The state support went down as a percentage but not as a value. Since some portions increased making the pie bigger somer parts decreased as a percent. I shouldn't have to explain fractions to you. The states have never used federal money to fund universities and colleges, so how much money they are getting from the feds now or then for other programs is irrelevant and even if this was the case it wouldn't be an across the board effect b/c as I mentioned earlier when I did address this point each state would deal with it uniquely.

Tuition has seen a spike in relation to the subsidies hence this entire thread.

Image Detail for - College_tuition_Graph

Pack it in Kirk. You got owned on this one.
Great, we agree state support went down as a percentage of total funding. So now we're arguing over whether cuts in federal funding to states caused states to cut funding to state universities. If it wasn't federal cuts in state aid that caused states to cut university funding, what was it?

Your own graph shows a huge spike in federal sunsidies for higher education since 2000. Total subsidies increased more than fourfold. So how come tuition costs didn't increase fourfold in the same time period? Tuition costs kept on increasing at a slightly higher rate than the pre-2000 rate but there was no dramatic spike as a reult of the fourfold increase in subsidies. Why not? Doesn't this show that there's no relation between tuition fees and federal subsidies of higher education? If not, why not?
Your shucking and jiving here is amusing. The tuition graph shows roughly an 80% (I'm just eye balling it) increase from 2000-2007.The federal spending increased during the time period for loans, grants etc went from around 10 billion to around 20 billion. Now I don't claim to be smart enough to tell you what $1 dollar of subsidy does to $1 of price and I can't tell you exactly what percent the price of tuition is beating inflation by but those graphs show correlation between tuition increases and loan/grant money. You can argue that it isn't causation if you want but as of yet you can't back up your point with any correlation at all. State funding went down as a percent but up as an actual amount (237m- 318m). This point is some what moot b/c other means of funding went from 162 million to 1 billion. So whatever percent the state decreased by was more than made up for. At the end of the day it is a market that is highly subsidized and the price has beat inflation for a lengthy period of time. You can talk about other contributing factors till you are blue in the face but you can't ignore the role the proliferation of student loans has played in the escalating price.