Pendulum Swinging back? California Higher Ed

[Wahoo Redux]

American society tends to be a pendulum: we swing so far one direction----we start to worry about the swing----and then we begin to correct by swinging back the other way.

Could this happen with higher ed?

From NBC News: California Takes Lead in Higher ED

In funding these programs, California is bucking a national trend as most other states continue to reduce, not increase, their investment in higher education. With a higher education budget of $18.5 billion in 2019-2020, California is one of just four states spending more on higher education, per student, than they did in 2008, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal-leaning think tank.

[ciao_yall]

American society tends to be a pendulum: we swing so far one direction----we start to worry about the swing----and then we begin to correct by swinging back the other way.

Could this happen with higher ed?

From NBC News: California Takes Lead in Higher ED

In funding these programs, California is bucking a national trend as most other states continue to reduce, not increase, their investment in higher education. With a higher education budget of $18.5 billion in 2019-2020, California is one of just four states spending more on higher education, per student, than they did in 2008, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal-leaning think tank.

Because the California economy is highly dependent on college graduates in all fields.

[Parasaurolophus]

I sort of doubt it, since California has such a large and robust set of public institutions. It's such a huge network that it does seem sort of inevitable to me that their particular pendulum would swing back, since the state has so much already invested in those institutions, there are so many stakeholders, etc. You can only piss off that many people for so long. I think that makes them a real outlier.

But elsewhere, the hollowing-out seems to have largely succeeded in dismantling state education systems. I have a hard time imagining Louisiana bouncing back, for example, and Illinois and Wisconsin look kind of precarious, and Arizona and Pennsylvania seem like they're in a bad way, too. I kind of expect California and New York to buck the trend and swing back, but I'm much more skeptical about other states.

From this article, per-student funding is only up in California, Hawai'i, North Dakota, and Wyoming. They're apparently the only four states where state spending on higher ed has crawled back above recession levels. But then, tuition in Hawai'i has increased pretty dramatically, and that's a problem in a poor state with poor secondary education (although, to be fair, tuition started out pretty low).

[Wahoo Redux]

Well, we wouldn't expect a sudden sea change.

If there is a reversal it would be on the scale of decades, just like the decline (2008 was an anomaly which accelerated the process). The article makes the argument that CA is a bellwether state.

There are maybe other signs too.  For instance, I posted this elsewhere:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/11/27/federal-data-show-proportion-instructors-who-work-full-time-rising