اثرات منافع سیاسی دولتی و خروجی محیط دانشگاه روی درآمدهای دانشگاه دولتی

Using data for 428 individual campuses in all 50 states, I show that state government funding and tuition and fee revenues at public universities depend on both political and economic factors. State government funding varies depending on the relative size of various interest groups in each state, as well as the ability of public universities to present a united front when dealing with state government. Differences in state government funding at specific campuses reflect differences in the net political benefits to political officials from the supply of instruction, academic research and public service. Net tuition and fee revenues are higher at campuses that receive less state government funding, but also higher in states where public universities have more financial autonomy. The price of attending college thus depends in part on whether the relevant decision makers are state government officials or university administrators.

Although public universities obtain revenues from a wide variety of sources (Noll, 1998), by far the most important sources of unrestricted revenues remain state governments and students. For campuses analyzed in this paper, the median share of all unrestricted revenues obtained from these sources was 78 percent in 1994–95, and 93.5 percent if I exclude stand-alone activities such as hospitals and federal research centers. Revenues from both of these sources relative to enrollments vary widely across campuses. State government funding per full-time equivalent (FTE)1 student ranged from US$17,102 at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks to just US$935 at Castleton State College in Vermont. Net tuition and fee revenues per FTE student ranged from US$10,885 at the University of Vermont to just US$871 at Northwest Oklahoma State University (National Center for Education Statistics, 1994–95). Comparisons based on dollar amounts per FTE student are not very enlightening, however, as revenues from both sources should vary depending on a number of political and economic factors. State government funding for public universities should depend initially on available government resources and the political costs and benefits to legislators and governors from allocating scarce resources to public higher education. Funding for particular campuses should also depend on the mix of students and the extent to which each campus supplies public and quasi-public goods such as academic research, agricultural extension services, and public policy advice. Tuition rates obviously differ for state residents and nonresidents, and should also depend on the amount of state government funding and students' willingness to pay for instruction at each campus. Moreover, public universities in different states enjoy different degrees of autonomy over financial matters (Volkwein & Malik, 1997). Tuition and fee revenues may depend on whether the relevant decision makers are state government officials or public university administrators. Nonetheless, relatively little research exists explaining revenues from state governments and students at individual public university campuses. Virtually all previous studies of state government funding are limited to major research universities, or use data aggregated to the state level. Many of these studies do not ask whether state government funding is affected by political interests, or whether funding for individual campuses is affected by the supply of public and quasi-public goods. Studies that simultaneously analyze state government funding and tuition revenues are even less common. Most previous studies omit tuition revenues entirely, while others assume that tuition rates are set independent of state government funding. I estimate a system of four equations in order to determine the effects of political interests and campus outputs on revenues at 428 public university campuses in all 50 states. I estimate revenue equations for state government appropriations, grants and contracts, and net tuition and fee revenues. I also estimate equations for separately budgeted spending on research and public service to nonacademic constituencies, in order to allow for simultaneous causation between spending and revenues. Given tax revenues, state government funding for public universities is lower in states with many elderly residents, who receive few or no direct benefits from public universities but do benefit from other government programs. State government funding is also lower in states with large private higher education sectors, and where a large number of university governing boards limits the ability of public universities to present a united front when lobbying on their own behalf. The marginal effects of campus outputs on state government funding vary depending on the extent to which they benefit important state constituencies, and perhaps a tendency for university administrators and faculty to expand certain programs rather than maximize revenues. The marginal effect of state resident undergraduate enrollment exceeds the effects of nonresident undergraduate and graduate and professional enrollments, while the marginal effect of spending on public service to nonacademic constituencies exceeds that of spending on academic research. Net tuition and fee revenues also reflect both political and economic considerations. Controlling for enrollments, input prices, and students' willingness to pay, net tuition and fee revenues are higher at campuses with limited state government funding, but also higher in states where public university campuses have more autonomy over financial matters. This implies that university administrators are less concerned with maintaining low tuition rates than are state legislators and executives. Finally, the determinants of separately budgeted spending on academic research are somewhat different from the determinants of spending on public service. Controlling for revenues and land-grant status, spending on research is a complement to graduate and professional instruction, but a substitute for undergraduate instruction. Spending on public service to nonacademic constituencies is independent of enrollments, but tends to be higher in states where farming is an important part of the state economy. Section 2 summarizes previous research on state government funding of public universities. Section 3 discusses my model specification and the expected effects of my explanatory variables. Section 4 presents the empirical analysis, and Section 5 summarizes key findings and implications.

My results support the hypothesis that both state government funding and net tuition and fee revenues at public universities depend on political as well as economic factors. State government funding is lower in states with many elderly voting-age residents, who do not benefit directly from subsidized instruction, and also lower in states with large private higher education sectors. Public universities in states that have few governing boards receive more state government funding than those in states that have many boards and thus greater coordination problems. This implies that state government funding depends on the ability of public universities to lobby effectively for themselves. Although my analysis uses cross-sectional data, the results have implications for the effects of demographic shifts over time. As the fraction of the population over 65 continues to grow in many states (see US Department of Commerce, various years), political opposition to state government funding for public universities may increase. Further work using time series or panel data is warranted in order to study the effects of political interests on changes in state government funding and tuition over time. Further work is also warranted in order to identify other interest groups that are important for state government funding of public universities. One of the most common policy arguments for state support for higher education is that tuition and fees should be kept low so as to maximize the number of prospective students who can afford to attend college (Fischer, 1990; McPherson and Schapiro, 1991), and previous research suggests that demand for low-cost access to higher education may be correlated with race. Kane (1994, p. 893) finds that the effect of tuition increases from 1973 through 1988 on the probability of college enrollment was greater for Blacks than for Whites in the same income quartile, and argues that this is because Blacks tend to have fewer assets than Whites with similar incomes. McPherson and Schapiro (1997) make a similar argument with respect to both Blacks and Hispanics, which should also apply to Native Americans.16 When I include the fraction of state voting-age population that is Black, Hispanic or Native Americans in my state government funding equation, the coefficient is positive and 1.95 times its standard error. However, it is not clear whether any causation is associated with race per se or some other attribute such as wealth,17 nor are there any previous studies suggesting that state governments have been responsive to political pressure from minorities on this issue. Finally, it is possible that this variable is really a proxy for geographic differences. Both state government funding and minority populations are very low in some New England states. When I omit Vermont and New Hampshire from my sample, the coefficient on the minority variable drops by a third and becomes statistically insignificant. I therefore omit any measure of demand for low-cost access from my results in this paper, but raise the question for future research. My results also go beyond previous studies by showing that state government funding for specific campuses depends on the mix of outputs supplied by each campus. With respect to instructional outputs, the marginal effect of enrollment evaluated at the sample mean is greater for state resident undergraduates than for nonresident undergraduates or graduate and professional students. Further analysis reveals that this result is somewhat sensitive to estimating separate models for subsets of the data, and to the values assumed for different variables. In general, campuses that have small graduate and professional programs are more likely to generate lower marginal revenues from graduate and professional enrollments than from resident undergraduate enrollments. With respect to public and quasi-public goods, the marginal effect of a dollar spent on public service to nonacademic state constituencies exceeds the marginal effect of a dollar spent on a relatively “pure” public good like academic research, and this result becomes even more pronounced when I focus on “full-service” campuses. All of the factors that affect state government funding also affect net tuition and fee revenues indirectly, but in the opposite direction. In addition, net tuition and fee revenues generated for given enrollments, input costs and students' willingness to pay are higher in states where public university campuses have more autonomy over financial matters. This implies that state legislators seek to hold tuition rates down so that more state residents can afford to attend college. However, my finding that the effect of net tuition and fee revenues on state government funding is not statistically significant suggests that public university administrators who hold the line on tuition increases cannot count on making up the difference with increased state appropriations. Additional research is also warranted on the specific instruments used by state governments to regulate public universities, and their effects on tuition rates and outputs. Finally, expenditures on academic research and public service to nonacademic constituencies at individual campuses are not affected by net tuition and fee revenues, but do depend on revenues from various government and private sources. The supply of public service to nonacademic constituencies is also greater in states where farming is a more important part of the state economy. Thus, public university outputs as well as revenues depend on both political and economic factors.