States Target Higher Ed. for Cuts Once Again

Actions could make choices more difficult for high school students.

With some states needing to slash billions of dollars from their budgets this fiscal year—and fiscal 2009 not looking much brighter—K-12 isn’t the only area of education targeted for spending cuts.

Higher education, which also accounts for a large percentage of discretionary spending in state budgets, is feeling the effects of the slow revenue growth, too. Consequently, tuition and fees at public colleges and universities are likely to continue going up, and state scholarship programs might get more competitive. All this is worrisome news for high school students, their parents, and school counselors.

Continued spikes in the cost of attending college are certain to have “implications in terms of student access,” said Murray J. Haberman, the executive director of the California Postsecondary Education Commission, an agency that plans and coordinates higher education in the state—one of several where cuts in higher education are occurring. “People still think there is value in higher education, but families are going to be making different decisions,” he said, about whether their children go...