Monday, June 3, 2013

Frank Lasee Compares Apples (El-Hi Public Education Costs) to Oranges (Public Higher Education Tuition)


Lasee's Notes.  "Twelve and a half thousand dollars per kid".  May 31, 2013

Excerpt:  Wisconsin spends $11 billion dollars for public education every year. $5 billion comes from property taxes, $5 billion from state income taxes, and $1 billion from federal taxes. $11 billion dollars is not enough for some – they want more!

About half of your property taxes go to support public schools. When you add that to state and federal funding, we spend about $12,500 per student annually. Wisconsin spends about $1,000 more per student than our neighbors in Minnesota, Illinois & Michigan.

$12,500 is more than UW-Madison students pay in tuition ($10,000) and a lot more than students at UW-Milwaukee ($9,000) and UW Superior ($8,000) pay for their tuition. $12,500 is even more than medical school tuition at UW Madison!



Time out.  A couple of red flags (emblazoned with fruit?) went up as I read these "notes".

First off, I have no idea where Lasee cherry-picked the $12,500.  Guess it just makes a better headline.

Education Spending Per Student Fell For First Time in 2011, from Governing, 5/21/2013, to which Lasee provides a link.   Did he not check the table?

These are the most recent education spending per student figures available.

Wisconsin ranks 15th overall

And secondly, it's common knowledge that tuition doesn't cover the full cost of a college education.  In other words, what a student pays for tuition at a public university isn't comparable to a state's per student el-hi education funding.

Students and States Near a 50-50 Split on the Cost of Public Higher Education.  (The Chronicle of Higher Education, 3/6/2013)

Excerpt:   Net tuition revenue made up 47 percent of public colleges' educational costs in 2012, an increase of more than six percentage points from the previous year, according to an annual report from the State Higher Education Executive Officers. 

In 1987, the report says, net tuition revenue accounted for just 23 percent of those costs. In 2001 tuition was a little more than a third of the costs.

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