Public colleges tap private funds as state support dwindles

As state subsidies for higher education are dwindling, public colleges in the Washington region and elsewhere are learning they must tap private funds to survive.

Fundraising by George Mason University rose from $3 million in 1990 to $32 million in 2010, according to an industry survey by the Council for Aid to Education. After adjusting for inflation, that amounts to a nearly four-fold increase.

Loading...

Comments

• Weigh In
• Corrections?

The survey showed donations to the University of Maryland Baltimore County surged from about $1 million to $8 million in that span. Towson University’s fundraising climbed from $1 million to $6 million.

Such fundraising campaigns, echoed in other states, come as legislatures across the nation are cutting higher education budgets.

Per-student state funding has dwindled from $8,035 in 2000 to $6,451 in 2010 nationwide, in inflation-adjusted dollars, according to the State Higher Education Executive Officers.

The trend has spawned dark humor. Public colleges, some in the field say, have evolved from state-supported to state-assisted to state-located.

“We are at, in the current fiscal year, the lowest funding level in 30 years. And it’s clearly going to get worse,” said Dan Hurley, director of state relations and policy analysis at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities.

Young, ambitious state institutions such as George Mason are playing a desperate game of catch-up against an elite group of older universities with billion-dollar endowments and a long tradition of giving. Johns Hopkins University, Georgetown University and the University of Virginia each raise hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Even the flagship University of Maryland, a relative upstart, took in $87 million in fiscal year 2010.

Legislatures are shifting the cost of college to students: public university tuition has nearly doubled nationwide in the past decade.

Most public colleges have relied on state funding and student tuition for nearly all their revenue. Now, they are looking to build other funding sources, turning to private donors with unprecedented vigor.

Flagship public universities are insulated against the state funding losses, partly on the strength of massive fundraising operations. Even before the decline in state funding, the University of Virginia drew only one quarter of its revenue from Richmond.

Other state institutions are more vulnerable. State cuts drove Virginia Commonwealth University to an unprecedented 24 percent tuition increase in 2010. George Mason hasn’t raised faculty salaries in three years. Around the region, state universities are hiring fewer tenure-track professors, allowing class sizes to grow and pressing student lounges into use as teaching spaces.

George Mason, a onetime U-Va. branch campus that gained independence in 1972, relied on the state for 60 percent of its operating budget as recently as a decade ago. Today, that share has fallen below 30 percent. Per-student state funding has dropped from $5,319 in 2001 to $3,238 in 2011, in constant dollars.