Public Colleges Reach Across State Lines for a Tuition Windfall

[Coach Andy Mac]

In a new research report for the Brookings Institution, Ariel Gelrud Shiro and I found that 48 out of 50 flagship universities increased their share of out-of-state freshmen from 2002 to 2018. The average increase was 55%, although some, such as University of California, Berkeley, and University of Alabama, increased by more than 150%. The result is a change in the nature of many of these schools. For example, 8 of 10 University of Maine freshmen were Mainers in the fall of 2002. By 2018 that figure had fallen to 54%.

As public universities increasingly reject their own residents for admission, they undermine their political support. As state legislatures cut funding for higher education, schools need greater numbers of tuition-paying out-of-state students to increase revenue. Our research didn’t uncover who started this cycle, but we find evidence that the more a state school reduced its in-state student share, the less support it received from its state government.

read more:  https://www.wsj.com/articles/public-colleges-tuition-windfall-out-of-state-11630359738