SHEEO Analysis of Fiscal Year 2021 State Funding for Higher Education

For more than a decade, the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO) has collected data on state support for higher education in the current fiscal year on behalf of Illinois State University’s Center for the Study of Education Policy. 

The past fiscal year has been one of tremendous uncertainty and financial challenges for colleges and universities. Institution leaders have faced sharp declines in many of their revenue sources in addition to unexpected new costs as they have attempted to respond to the repercussions of the pandemic. Within this context, we received the first look at early fiscal year 2021 state appropriations from the Grapevine survey on state higher education funding. SHEEO has completed a detailed analysis of these data. In this brief, we highlight detailed, timely, and important trends in state tax appropriations and sector-level appropriations.