SHEEO's 'SHEF': State Higher Education Finance Report

What might have been the beginning of a financial recovery in 2008 for public higher education ended prematurely with the growing awareness, late in the year, of the depths of the current financial crisis. The State Higher Education Executive Officers organization (SHEO) has been publishing this annual "state of finance for public higher ed" for quite some time now. The most recent report - PDF of report here, PDF of press release here - is not optimistic:

[T]he current recession is likely to renew and intensify a long term trend of declining state support and higher tuition and fees for students in public colleges and universities. “Despite progress over the past three years, per student state and local support for public higher education has only recovered about half of the funding lost during the sharp downturn from 2002 to 2005,” noted Paul Lingenfelter, president of SHEEO. “All the signs in the current recession point toward further decline, renewing and accelerating the long term trend for public higher education to become more expensive for students and their families.”
Recessions tend to be particularly harsh on public higher education and on its students. The data for the past 20 years clearly outline the pattern and its consequences. Constant dollar state support per student fell by 13 percent from 1988 to 1993, two recessions ago. (All financial comparisons are in 2008 dollars.) During that period, tuition jumped from 25 percent to 30 percent of total revenues. In the late 1990s, state support recovered and the rate of annual tuition increases slowed down, but tuition remained near 30 percent of total revenues.