Correction: Total Government Spending on Higher Education
Last night I realized that I repeatedly used an incorrect figure for government higher education spending in my debate with Steve Pearlstein. I said “Taxpayers heavily
subsidize higher education – about $500 billion dollars per year.” But ~$500B is in fact the figure for total higher education spending.
The true figures for higher education spending (see Digest of Education Statistics 2011, Tables 31 and 384):
$234.4B for state and local spending (2008-2009)
plus
$36.4B for on-budget federal spending (2008)
plus
$76.0B for off-budget federal spending (2008)
for a total of $346.8B. “A third of a trillion dollars per year” would have been far closer to the truth than “Half a trillion dollars per year.” My bad, no excuses.
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