Rising tuition costs hurting Oregon students, report says

Oregon has reduced its spending per student enrolled in higher education by more than 20 percent since 2008. A new report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said these kinds of cuts are having an impact on students’ potential for success.

In addition to cutting services, public universities in the state have raised tuition. According to Michael Mitchell, senior policy analyst with the center, the high cost of college is putting a lid on what graduates can achieve post-college.

“High levels of debt, even with a diploma, can prohibit newly-graduated individuals from starting their own businesses and becoming entrepreneurs,” Mitchell said; “which of course has implications not only for their own lives, but for the communities that they live in that would have benefited from having an additional entrepreneur.”

Overall, the reduction in state funding adds up to nearly $1,400 less each year per student, when adjusted for inflation. However in 2015, Oregon started turning this reduction around, increasing higher-education funding by 16 percent – more than any other state.

While the funding increase in the last budget cycle helped, Mitchell said, Oregon’s public colleges are still left to figure out how to address the needs of their students with fewer dollars.

“As states have made these cuts to higher education, schools have had to make decisions about increasing tuition,” he said. “Or they’ve had to cut their own campus budgets, which means that they’re providing fewer services, there are fewer extracurricular activities, class sizes may get larger.”

According to the report, nationwide, funding for two- and four-year colleges is still $10 billion below what it was just prior to the recession. And schools have had to raise tuition and cut faculty to find extra dollars. In Oregon, tuition has increased by nearly 38 percent in the last eight years – well above the average national increase of 33 percent.