Southern states have been disproportionately cutting spending on public higher education. In a region where the poorest families already face some of the nation’s highest poverty rates, forced tuition increases make their colleges and universities among the least affordable, a slew of recent data show.
This contributes to falling enrollment in states already struggling with some of the nation’s lowest percentages of residents with college educations.
It’s “a vicious circle,” said Dave Spence, the president of the Atlanta-based Southern Regional Education Board, or SREB. “You’ve got a region that’s poor. Why? Because it’s undereducated.” Yet budget cuts keep pushing university and college degrees out of the reach of many.