Even the most detailed coverage I've found on this seems to stop at more or less "higher education isn't as short term advantageous for states to support, causes like healthcare, etc. get more media attention" (with no references as to who said that, or where), but if that's the case I'm not sure why this would only have been a problem within the last 40 years, what changed since 1980?

Oh right, guess I should post this. This answer brought this up:

One of the things that changed since 1980 was the end of the cold war; while I'd hope that we'd be able to pay for education in peacetime too, is that maybe one of the things that made higher education seem less important / newsworthy?

A lot of it is simply political, which doesn't always have a lot of logic. In the US, for example (as in several other countries) there is one political party that is pretty explicitly anti-intellectual

I think globalization also plays a big role. It used to be that you could make a strong argument that funding higher ed in your country meant having a higher educated workforce in your country. Now, I think there is a perception that those workers might go anywhere when they graduate. I think that's short-sighted, and there is lots of evidence that universities create a ton of local economic activity, but I think it remains a political assumption nonetheless

@BryanKrause I agree it's without a doubt political, but in the US we haven't had 40 years straight of one party being in control, and some of the states that cut funding for higher ed typically elected democrats; that's what's making me think that this is political, but maybe not partisan.

Though, I guess it's not impossible that it is partisan, and the effects of one party weren't able to be completely cancelled out or repealed by the other, though I'd think something with that level of organization and planning should have some kind of paper trail, if you know where I can find something like that please link it to me

see cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/… for a graph of changes in funding by state

Another possible case to be made is that de-regulation and tax cuts usually happen in good times, and budgets get cut in bad times, meaning the budget gets cut, then the budget gets cut. It's true that the '08 recession was especially bad, but this isn't anywhere near the first business cycle colleges have endured. Was the '08 recession (and I guess, the other recessions from 1980 to now) so bad that it caused unprecedented cuts that centuries of recessions didn't?

@jrh I might be biased a bit by my own state, where control of the governor's office flips back and forth but the state legislature is gerrymandered to have been under complete GOP control for quite some time. That means when one party is control they can make big changes, but the other cannot

Ultimately I think there is fear that raising taxes will cause the GOP to win elections, so democrats avoid doing it. The GOP on the other hand keeps cutting taxes. The end result is not enough tax money to fund all the priorities, not even K-12 schools...

There's been a pretty substantial dismantling of "big government" in the US since the Reagan years.

@BryanKrause I see, I'll try and find something on whether the US tended towards small government in both parties; I haven't heard that before, but it sounds resonable

also, to put it in a historical sense, post-WW2 there was also a push for small government, but maybe there's something in particular about the Regan Administration that made it more significant and long lasting than that

New Hampshire, as one of the highest budget cutters and a traditionally "blue" state may be an interesting specific state to look into further; it might follow the state legislature pattern you mentioned

by the way, recommended reading, amazon.com/dp/0674001850 "times are good, we don't need the government's help anymore, let's cut funding" isn't anything new, it's as old as FDR

also if anything it's more worrying that democrats are also favoring budget cuts, that means it's not as simple as just voting for one party or another, we'll have to review each candidate on a case by case basis

I'll give you a perspective from Colorado, a state that is now moderately blue, but hasn't been for long. Sometime in the mid-90s, when Republicans dominated politics here, the state gained a clause in the state constitution that says (i) there has to be a balanced budget, (ii) if there is a surplus, the money has to be distributed to the people, (iii) the state budget can only grow year-over-year by the sum of inflation plus population growth.

It's probably the worst invention in democracy, because when the dot-com bubble came around, tax revenues dropped, and point (i) above required a balanced budget, so the state couldn't take on debt => it needed to slash services. Point (ii) also meant that there is no significant rainy-day fund the state can draw from.

Finally, point (iii) meant that once tax revenues rebounded after the recession, the state can not return to pre-recession funding levels for services because that would exceed the growth limit. The combination of all of these things means that over time, the state budget as a fraction of the state's economy ratches down-down-down.

hm, interesting, that was the kind of detail I was hoping to find

It's a terrible system, and it's going to be interesting to see how that will change in the coming years now that democrats are in power in the state house, state senate, and the governor's office for the first time. But the state constitution can only be changed after a referendum, and lifting restrictions on taxes has not found the favor of the population in recent history. I don't have high hopes for things getting better soon.

I can see how something that sounds so innocuous would be so hard to fight, and it matches the general trend of "economic hardship reduces funding" quite well

The point is that that is only the view from one state. It's a pretty unique constitutional clause as far as other states are concerned, but other states have other mechanisms that limit the ability of politicians to spend money. I believe that a sizable number of states have constitutional clauses that require voter approval for every tax increase, for example, but not decrease.

That makes it easy for politicians in good times to slash taxes, and almost impossible to raise them again in response to different needs.

also, I guess what I mean by "innocuous", is, a politician opposing it would make a case that sounds like "it's okay for us to raise your taxes by an infinite amount at any time" to some ears, maybe in some circles it's comforting to think their own tax expenses can't go up significantly.

though... still, I have to bring up the same thing again, why did it take until the 90s for such a clause to come up?

I agree that the clause is pretty disastrous and I have generally heard rumors of other clauses like this, echoed by my teachers in public school in one form or another, so I would say it's probably the case in my state as well. I have not seen it get much media coverage of any kind, though, unfortunately. I hope that your state gets more support for the cause soon, though I am not sure what a plan would look like for that.

I think the other question is what the consequences of defunding universities are in the long run. The immediate consequence is that there is an enormous amount of student debt in this country, but it's not entirely clear that that has actually led to a less educated workforce: People are willing to take on very large debts to get an education. The most immediate impact is probably that this debt leads to a delay in people "having a life".

But other than that, the country has done ok with giving universities little funding, and so the price to pay to politicians (both in terms of getting re-elected and, presumably, feeling bad about not having the country on the right track) is relatively small.

Beyond this, considering the general philosophy of what people think about taxes in the US, I think it would be useful to read up on the term "Starve the best" -- e.g., here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast

@WolfgangBangerth the student debt burden is the most visible and politically talked about consequence, but the consequence I'm more worried about is the impact it might have on the viability of academia and research as a career

but I don't think I can really explain that at the moment, so disregard that (too late to delete it)

That link gave some context, thanks

though I'm not sure if Reagan was really the originator of this, wikipedia seems to also say that Eisenhower and other presidents attempted to tighten fiscal budgets

I'm sure that Reagan only picked up on a sentiment that was already there. But I only arrived in the US in 2002 and so wouldn't know.

As far as academic careers are concerned: I'm not sure the complaints are actually true. At least at research universities, departments today have no fewer tenure track faculty than they had 20 years ago -- in fact, I would claim that they have more on average. So the best researchers continue to find good jobs at these universities.

That, however, may not be true for the lower-level universities. I don't have any insight into where they are with tenure-track vs adjunct faculty, but suspect that they have shifted at least some of the work from the former group to the latter group.

What has also changed is that universities graduate more PhDs than they used to: nsf.gov/news/mmg/media/images/fig_1a_FINAL.jpg

So if one complains about the job market, the accurate description isn't really (assuming I'm right with my numbers) that there are fewer jobs around, but that there are more people wanting these jobs.

yeah, that's why I didn't really keep going on that thought, I would have deleted it I could, but SE chat doesn't allow it after a few minutes

Rumor has it more schools are hiring adjunct faculty and lecturers instead of tenure track professors, but I wouldn't consider random opinion pieces without references to be useful sources on this. I decided I didn't really have enough material to say much on that.

I would like to read a book that covered economic policy in depth in the 1900s but I haven't been able to find a book like that; I'm guessing the information is buried in 50 very specific books that I don't know how to search for.

It's almost like you have to know what was considered "new and interesting" in those decades to find out what was new and interesting

@WolfgangBangerth It is pretty common for states to require balanced budgets, though.. and no one wants to be seen raising taxes when people are suffering during a recession, which is typically when states run into budget problems.

via urban.org/research/publication/balanced-budget-requirements "In 44 states and the District of Columbia (DC), the governor must propose a balanced budget to the legislature; in 41 states and DC, the legislature must pass a balanced budget; and in 40 states, the governor must ultimately sign a balanced budget."

@BryanKrause -- right, which is why so many states are all in the same pickle right now. A consequence of the requirement of balanced budgets is that you need to have a sufficiently large rainy-day fund. But it turns out to be politically far easier to pass a budget that slowly pays back past debt in good times than sock away excess tax revenue into a rainy-day fund. Thus the problems states have every time we have a recession.

Separately, do you happen to know whether these balanced budget requirements are relatively recent inventions (say, the last 40 years) or substantially older?

I'm not sure on that one

I heard about it ~15-20 years ago, don't know about 40

@WolfgangBangerth I don't know specifically, but the same page I linked to says: "In 1977, only 33 states and DC had a requirement to balance revenues with expenditures. In 2015, 46 states and DC had some type of BBR in place. Thirty-seven of them and DC’s were constitutional"

The statement seems to suggest it's new with the "only" language in there, but...that's just 13 more states between 1977 and 2015. So, it seems like "older" is the general answer, but the states without a balanced budget requirement have decreased quite a bit in the last 40 years

Ah, interesting!

"older" seems to be the general answer to a lot of things