Or misunderstood, at the very least. Apparently, most people don't realize that funding for higher education has generally been on the decline in recent years:
A majority of Americans mistakenly believe that government support for public higher education has increased or stayed the same over the past decade, according to survey results released on Monday.
The survey, conducted by American Public Media and The Hechinger Report, found that 27 percent of respondents thought “government funding” for public colleges had risen since 2009, and 32 percent said it had stayed the same. The survey question did not distinguish between local, state, or federal support.
Only 29 percent of respondents correctly answered that government support had dropped. In 2017 state support for public colleges over all was down by $9 billion compared with 2009, when adjusted for inflation.
While many states have increased annual support for several years now, buoyed by strong economies, in most cases the increases have not made up the ground lost to huge cuts in the years immediately after the Great Recession.
Categories:
Higher Education,
HigherEd