After voting to approve yet another tuition increase in 2011, University of California regent Bonnie Reiss lamented, “Faced with enormous financial cuts forced on us by political leaders, we only have a handful of options open to us, and all are horrible options.” Andrea Newman, a regent at the University of Michigan, agrees. Justifying her vote for higher tuition, Newman explained, “The budget cuts passed by the legislature are impossible to make up otherwise.”
The budget cuts are real. Some states, such as Arizona and New Hampshire, have cut as much of 50 percent of their per-student state spending on education since the financial crisis hit, according to a report by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities: