On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 11:11 AM, Jerry Barnes <[email protected]> wrote: > > "A bit of research shows that in-state resident, undergraduate tuition and > fees for full time students in 1980-81 was $969. In 2009-10 it was $7,430." > > Wow, a 667% increase without factoring in room, board, fees, and books.
It does factor in fees, but not room and board or books, that is correct. > Back to one of your original points. There is a potential fallacy in what > I believe you are trying to present. I may be wrong and don't care enough > to research it. Here is what you presented: > > "30 years ago, for instance, the University of Oregon had roughly 50% of > their budget funded by the state. Today, that number is 8%." > > > It's seems that you are trying to say that the state has cut systematically > cut funding. That is, you seem to making the State the one in control. > Hard to believe for a left leaning state like Oregon. It is a state university. I'm starting to think you don't understand what a state university is. It is a public institution. The employees are public employees. Yes, the state is in charge. It has nothing to do with left or right leaning anything. That's how public colleges and universities work. Also, just for the sake of information, Oregon is not as left leaning as you seem to think. The state Senate is 16-14 Democrat majority but the House is an equal 30-30 split. > If you are not arguing this, that's okay because I believe the perspective > is till important. > > What if the state has continued to give the same amount or even more of > it's budget while the universities budgets have risen so sharply that what > was once 50% is now 8%? The state contribution has declined in nominal dollars (and obviously much more in inflation-adjusted dollars). The biggest change started in 1990 when the state passed what is known as Measure 5 which was one of the first property tax limit measures in the country (many other states ended up doing similar things). It established a hard baseline for property valuation and allowed no more than $5 per 1K in property value for schools and then Measure 47 set a mandatory cap on allowed increases in property appraisal value for tax purposes at 3% per year. This means that regardless of what your house is worth on the market, your value for tax assessment purposes can only have gone up a small amount since 1990 and the allocation for schools (and other pieces) is fixed. For instance, the house that I live in (I rent) has a declared market value of about $220,000. However, the property value for the purposes of tax assessment is $64,440. If we get a sudden boom next year in house prices and my house sold for, say, $300K, it would still only be taxed on a value of $65K (if that). When you combine the above with periodic recessions, increased costs due to mandatory minimum sentences, required spending on growing K-12 populations and issues with the pension system, higher ed has often been left behind. Oregon has some unique revenue issues but most states have had a similar confluence of troubles that has led to a wide spread disinvestment in public higher education. Cheers, ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:352072 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/unsubscribe.cfm
