The Changing Nature of Public Support for Higher Education in the United States

Abstract

The higher education system in the United States is distinguished from those of many other countries by two characteristics: 1) there is a long and significant history of private institutions of higher education; and 2) public higher education is largely governed and controlled by state governments, rather than by the federal government. The first colleges in the nation were private institutions founded during the colonial era, beginning with Harvard College in 1636. It was almost 150 years later that the first truly public institutions began to be created. Today, approximately 75 per cent of all postsecondary students are enrolled in public institutions of higher education (National Center for Education Statistics 2003a). The United States constitution provides no role for the federal government in providing education at any level; the word ‘education’ is not found in the constitution. Thus, as states realised the need to provide education beyond the secondary level, and to supplement that provided by private institutions (which were largely church-related and focused on training for the ministry), they began to develop colleges and universities. The passage of the federal Morrill Act in 1862 was a catalyst to the great expansion in the public system of higher education. The Morrill Act provided federal land grants to states, which could in turn sell the land and use the proceeds for the creation and expansion of public universities. The federal government entered a new realm of funding for higher education during World War II, when the need for scientific research in support of the war effort led the government to partner with universities by paying for research to be conducted there. The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act (more commonly known as the GI Bill), passed in 1944, for the first time brought the federal government into providing financial aid to students to attend college. The passage of the Higher Education Act in 1965 opened up federal student aid to all eligible students. Today, the federal role in funding higher education is primarily in these two areas: funding research, and funding students. The bulk of the remaining revenues for higher education institutions is from direct appropriations from states (funds provided by the state governments that generally subsidise the cost of undergraduate instruction) and from the tuition and fees paid by students and their families. Funding for public higher education in the United States today has been described as being in ‘crisis’ (Jenny and Arbak 2004; National Education Association 2004; Trounson 2004). The slowdown in the national economy has