higher ed

In addition to last week’s Digest story on all state expenditures, the National Association of State Budget Officers’ (NASBO) 2022 State Expenditures Report detailed information on higher education expenditures, finding a 9.4% increase (from $225 to $247 billion) in total higher education expenditures over the past fiscal year, a sizable increase from the 1.7% increase experienced from FY 2020 to 2021. State funds for higher education increased 9.3% and federal funds saw an increase of 12.1%. This represents a large growth in state fund spending (from -0.3% in FY 2021), yet a decrease in momentum for federal fund spending (from 15% in FY 2022).

Recognizing that innovation ecosystems require broad networks of partners working together and knowing that many institutions of higher education (IHEs) lack the research capacity to be able to participate in external partnerships, the NSF Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships invites proposals from Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs), Predominantly Undergraduate Institutions (PUIs), and two-year institutions with limited or no research capacity to apply for the support necessary to become equitable partners with teams competing under the current and subsequent NSF Engines program funding opportunities.

Two recent working papers — The Impact of High-Skilled Immigration on Regional Entrepreneurship from Columbia University and Getting Schooled: The Role of Universities in Attracting Immigrant Entrepreneurs from the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank — explore the impact of high-skilled immigrants on entrepreneurship and how universities attract immigrant entrepreneurs. Both papers find that high-skilled immigrants have a positive net effect on regional entrepreneurship and are critical to the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Despite the success of Michigan’s numerous initiatives to provide tuition-free college, an analysis from New America exploring Michigan’s effort to increase the affordability and accessibility of higher education found that the fragmented approach reduces the state’s ability to reach all residents needing financial assistance. To make college more affordable and accessible to all Michiganders, the report recommends considering more straightforward free-tuition programs.

Higher education enrollment dropped 1.1% between fall 2021 and 2022, a slight reprieve from historic COVID-induced drop-offs, as revealed by new preliminary data from the National Student Clearinghouse. Since fall 2020, enrollment has decreased by a combined 3.2% for graduate and undergraduate enrollment, representing a drop of approximately 1.5 million students since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In an effort to help to determine the economic impact of higher education institutions and hospitals within their regions and how reliant these regions are on these “anchor institutions” to drive their economy, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia developed an Anchor Economy Initiative. It recently published an Anchor Economy Report and created the Anchor Economy Dashboard, a new data set and website that measures employment, income, and gross value added from the institutions and hospitals, along with a new reliance index tool, for all 524 multicounty U.S. regions (394 metropolitan and 130 nonmetropolitan).

States with top-ranking university AI research programs garner a greater number of Phase II AI-related SBIR awards, according to a working paper from the Department of Economics at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Researchers there investigated state variations in the distribution of Phase II SBIR research projects focused on artificial intelligence (AI). The authors of the paper hypothesized that the state-by-state variations are related to the presence of a research university with a “Top 10” AI program in each state. Analysis showed that three out of the five states receiving the most funding for AI-related Phase II SBIR projects had a top-ranked AI research university. Although proximity to a top research university may be beneficial to Phase II SBIR applicants with AI-focused projects, it is not the only path to success in capturing SBIR funds.

The recently published, 2022 edition of New America’s annual survey on American perceptions of higher education, Varying Degrees, includes findings that should be of interest – and potential concern – for the TBED community. The report includes updated findings on American perceptions of the value, funding, accountability, and admissions for higher education and perceptions of current financial security. It also reveals significant differences in perceptions of higher education based on respondents’ political affiliations.

Although Americans perceptions on the economy dipped late last year, their financial well-being increased and hit its highest level since 2013, when the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System survey began. The results of the latest wide-ranging survey, reported in the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2021, also revealed the share of prime-age adults not working because they could not find work had returned to pre-pandemic levels; more adults would be able to cover a $400 emergency expense should one arise than at any point in the survey history; and, 15 percent of workers said they switched jobs in the previous year, with 60 percent of those reporting that the new job was better overall. The number of student loan borrowers who are behind on their payments declined compared to prior to the pandemic and self-reported financial well-being rose strongly with education.

Spring college enrollment figures released last week by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center (Clearinghouse) showed a continued decline with postsecondary enrollment falling to 16.2 million, a 4.1 percent decline from the previous spring. Combined with the 3.5 percent drop in enrollment last spring, the Clearinghouse reported that the undergraduate student body is now 9.4 percent, or nearly 1.4 million students, smaller than before the pandemic.