Thread by @ASpaldingKY

With the KY House's tax proposal that would devastate $ for critical services while tax cuts are skewed heavily to the rich & with the Senate’s budget expected soon, it’s important to underscore the damaging impact of so many years of budget cuts & the need for reinvestment 1/

Here’s a look at higher ed funding in KY (a thread) #kyga22 2/

According to a report by @CenterOnBudget , KY is among the 10 states with the worst cuts to state funding for higher ed since before the Great Recession: kypolicy.org/kentucky-among… 3/

State funding for KY’s public higher ed institutions has declined by 33.4% since 2008 once inflation is taken into account, hindering the state’s ability to provide a high quality and affordable postsecondary education 4/

According to the KY Council on Postsecondary ed, KY’s public higher ed campuses have lost $178 million in state funding in 2008, which is more than $500 in inflation-adjusted terms. On a per-student, inflation-adjusted basis funding is almost 40% less than in 2008 5/

Cumulative state budget cuts have contributed significantly to tuition increases as the public higher ed institutions increased tuition and fees in order to make up for some of the revenue losses at the same time fixed and other unavoidable costs have continued to increase 6/

KY ranks 6th worst among states for college affordability measured as the average net price of higher education at a public four-year institution as a share of median household income kypolicy.org/kentucky-among… 7/

Disaggregating the data by race shows that cost is a greater barrier for KYians of color. KY was 1 of 17 states where Black households would need to spend at least 40% of their incomes to get a degree. That’s compared to 29% for white households in KY 8/

While the 2021-22 budget included some additional investment in need-based scholarships, scholarship amounts have not kept pace with the rising costs of college attendance 9/

See @KyPolicy report on high rates of student debt in KY here: kypolicy.org/student-debt-f… 10/

While the House budget and particularly the Govn’s budget proposal include some additional investment in the state’s public universities and community colleges, much greater investment is needed to get back to 2008 levels of funding 11/11