Our economic mess has impacted just about everyone, including college students. Today, the U.S. Department of Education posted information on education costs at Universities around the country. If you follow the link "College Affordability and Transparency", you'll find information about the most and least expensive institutions of various types. For example, you can find out that tuition and fees at Penn State will cost you $14,410, while one of the lowest tuitions for a four year public institution can be found at Great Basin College - only $2,010 compared to the national average of $6,397.
A more interesting link is the one that carries you to the "State Spending Charts." Here you'll find data on changes, since 2003, in state and local appropriations, tuition costs, and government grants. The national data shows that appropriations increased slightly from 2003 through 2008, then declined dramatically (-7.0%) between 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 with the tanking economy. It's worth taking a few minutes to take a look at how that national average compares to individual states. A few states actually showed increased appropriations during the time frame - Ohio, for example, showed an increase in appropriations of over 6%. A few states are noteworthy in the tremendous decline. Alabama, of course, is one of them. State and local appropriations per fulltime undergraduate student in the Heart of Dixie declined 22.2% between '07-'08 and '08-'09.
Maybe Miss Alabama's level of understanding of biology isn't all that surprising, after all.
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