Rising tuition fuels the discussion about college affordability as frustrated students and parents pay increasingly higher tuition bills at Texas’ public colleges and universities. Many administrators claim that these increases are necessary because the Texas Legislature has reduced state funding for higher education, but the data simply does not support these claims.

There is no question that higher education’s cost structure is unsustainable. Looking at a thirty year period from 1976-77 to 2006-07, tuition at Texas colleges and universities has grown at well more than twice the rate of inflation. Figure 1 shows that actual tuition for the 2006-07 school year was $5,836 per student, but would have increased to only $2,186 per student had tuition increases kept pace with only inflation.

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Are state appropriations the problem?