The College Fix

State and federal funding of higher education is in decline this year. Why? Because for the last three years, funding levels were inflated by the massive $767-billion-dollar stimulus package. Universities were among the top recipients of stimulus dollars in every state–check out how many of the biggest grants went to universities in California, the state that received the most money. Many of those grants were earmarked for laboratory experiments and science projects, and were not used to bring down the cost of tuition, patch budget holes, or prepare universities for financial reality moving forward.

So even though a funding “decline” was as obvious a consequence of blowing through the stimulus money as a hangover is after a night of heavy drinking, The Chronicle of Higher Education acts like no one, except a wise few, could have possibly seen this coming:

Higher education’s oracles and prognosticators began warning of a “cliff” in state appropriations shortlyafter the $767-billion federal economic-recovery act passed, in 2009.

Now data show just how high that cliff was. Total state support for higher education declined 7.6 percent from the 2011 to the 2012 fiscal years, according to an annual report from the Grapevine Project, at Illinois State University, and the State Higher Education Executive Officers.

Look, it doesn’t take oracular powers to realize universities have spent themselves into oblivion–far, far beyond the point where increased funding could do them any good. I know this because the federal government dumped piles and piles of money into public university treasuries for the last three years, and institutions of higher education are no more sustainable today than they were before.

Like The College Fix on Facebook.