By: Selena Cardona
The State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO) recently released their 2019 State Higher Education Finance (SHEF) Report. The SHEF report aims to provide the earliest possible review of state and local support, tuition revenue, and enrollment trends for the most recently completed fiscal year. This report focuses on fiscal year 2019 which for most states was July 1, 2018 through June 30, 2019.
Some of the recent findings include:
- State and local funding for all higher education reached a record high ($103 billion) for the first time during the 2019 fiscal year. State tax and non-tax appropriations accounted for 88% of those funds, with tax appropriations contributing 11%.
- States contributed $92 billion and local governments in 29 states contributed just over $11 billion, totalling $103 billion in direct state and local contributions.
- Specifically, these funding sources include state tax appropriations, non-tax support (mainly from state lotteries), and non-appropriated support such as state-funded endowments, and other sources of state funding.
- Enrollment remained relatively stable both nationally and across states. There were just under 11 million full-time equivalent enrolled students in 2019.
- Full-time enrollment ranged from less than 17,000 in Alaska to 1.56 million in California.
- Twenty states had very stable enrollment from 2018 to 2019, with annual changes of less than 1 percent.
- There was a 2.4% increase in appropriations for public institutions.
- Nationally, public institutions received an average of $8,195 per full-time equivalent student (FTE).
- From 2018 to 2019, appropriations increased in 38 states and Washington, D.C.
- Across the states, per-FTE appropriations ranged from less than $3,000 in New Hampshire and Vermont to almost $19,000 in Wyoming.
- State public financial aid per FTE reached an all-time high.
- State public financial aid increased 4.0% from 2018 to 2019 and reached a high of $808 per FTE student.
- Across the United States, state financial aid for students attending public institutions increased 34.1% per FTE, the highest since the 2008 Great Recession.
- In 2019, state public financial aid ranged from under $100 to over $2,000 per FTE in Louisiana and Tennessee.
- Net tuition revenue declined for the first time this year since 2008.
- Following rapid increases in net tuition revenue in every state during the Great Recession, net tuition revenue declined 0.1% ($6 per FTE) and is explained in its entirety by the large increases in student financial aid which is deducted from net tuition revenue.
- Public institutions averaged $6,902 in net tuition revenue from in-state and out-of-state students in 2019.
- Total educational revenues increased for the seventh straight year.
- Total educational revenues reached an all-time high of $15,018 per FTE. This is the first time that, nationally, public institutions made more than $15,000 per FTE in total revenues.
- Total revenues increased in 36 states from 2018 to 2019 and declined in only five states (Indiana, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, and North Dakota).
- Total educational revenues ranged from a low of $10,262 in Florida to almost $23,000 in Wyoming.
- The student share of educational revenues rose from 20.9% in 1980 to 46% in 2019.
- In over half of all states, tuition revenue comprised more than 50% of total revenues. Three states had a student share above 75% in 2019 (Delaware, New Hampshire, and Vermont). Three states had a student share of less than 25% (California, New Mexico, and Wyoming).
