Our latest State Higher Education Finance (SHEF) State Effort and Capacity report looks at states’ ability and willingness to fund higher education. Policies and decisions about financing higher education are made in the context of multiple factors across each state, including current and projected economic conditions, state tax structures, competing budgetary priorities across the state, cultural and ideological shifts in the state population, and political and higher education characteristics of the state. The latest State Effort report combines external data with SHEF data on state funding for public and private higher education to construct indicators of state effort to fund higher education.
In FY 2023, the percentage of revenue allocated to higher education was 5.4%. This is a 0.3 percentage point increase from 2022 and a decline of 3.3 percentage points from 1980, the start of the SHEF collection.
Higher education support per capita in FY 2024 increased to $416, a 4.4% increase over 2023 and a 23.5% increase since 1980. Higher education support per $1,000 of personal income also increased in 2024 to $6, a 1.5% increase over 2023 but a 37.6% decrease from $10 in 1980.
Find data insights for state effort at https://shef.sheeo.org/insights-and-briefs/#reports. See the FY 2025 SHEF Report, released earlier this year, at https://shef.sheeo.org/report/.
State Higher Education Executive Officers Association