Tell us, below, if you find this kind of information resource valuable, or not. It is the parts of SCUP's daily Twitter feed of its environmental scanning, sorted into geographically pertinent items, by region.

 In The New York Times, Tamar Lewin writes about how tuition payments are exceeding state appropriations, and some of the possible consequences foreseen by higher education professionals. Examples in this article focus on California and South Caroline.

Scott Pattison, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers:

“The difference between this downturn and others in the past is that this time I don’t think higher education will be able to recover the ground it’s lost,” said Scott Pattison, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers. “I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t see that money coming back. And with tuition already out of reach for many folks, I don’t think there’s much ability to keep raising it.”

Mark Yudoff, president of the University of California system:

“If approved, this budget will mean that for the first time in our long history, tuition paid by University of California students and their families will exceed the state’s contribution to the core fund,” Mark Yudof, the president of the University of California system, told the Board of Regents. “For those who believe what we provide is a public good, not a private one, this is a sad threshold to cross.”

We have seen a considerable flurry of recent reports indicating some serious cutbacks in higher education budgets in some states. According to a new SHEEO/CSEP report that is being released today, states are spending $79B on higher ed in 2011, down only .7% from last year. But those cuts are not evenly spread. Texas, California, and Arizona, for example, are imposing more severe cuts. This is a summary from Inside Higher Ed's Scott Jaschik, who was able to peruse an early copy of the report. Here is a report from The Chronicle of Higher Education's Eric Kelderman. From Jaschik:

Notably, however, there were six states where the percentage losses were in double digits: Missouri (down 13.5 percent); Delaware (12.4 percent); Iowa (12.2 percent); Minnesota (11.7 percent); Arizona (11.6 percent) and Oregon (10.8 percent). Only one state reported a double-digit increase: Wyoming (up 24.7 percent).

While states use different financial procedures to support higher education, the Illinois State-SHEEO study is considered the definitive source on state appropriations, with consistent rules for what is counted (state funds for operating support and student aid) and what's not (funds for building projects and tuition revenue). Federal research grants (a significant budget line for research universities) aren't counted, but the federal stimulus "stabilization" funds -- which were intended to support the operations of public schools and colleges -- are included because they support the same purposes as general state appropriations for higher ed.

This Business Officer document is blurbed, "Stimulus funds for university research can be a mixed blessing, causing an institution’s facilities and administration rate to shrink. A case study presents strategies to keep rates in check."

The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA) presented higher education institutions with an unprecedented level of funding to expand and improve their research opportunities. Since ARRA's creation in February 2009, however, the government and academic community have debated the best approach to accounting for the additional funding and capturing its effect on facilities and administration (F&A) rates—the amount of overhead, or indirect costs, associated with federally funded research that universities can recoup.

The government, understandably, wants justification of every ARRA dollar awarded; ARRA grants come with a host of documentation and reporting requirements. Equally understandably, universities with increasingly tight budgets seek to recover from the government a significant percentage of their overhead costs. These costs have escalated with ARRA's administrative requirements, as universities must devote more staff time to gathering and submitting the required data. Given the government's regulations and stance in F&A rate negotiations, university leaders now question whether they'll be picking up more of the research tab—and, if so, just how much it could cost them.

The University of Oregon is engaging in a big-stakes transformation that challenges assumptions about what is a public and what is a private institution.From this page, you can download an executive summary, or the entire white paper, "Preserving Our Public Mission Through a New Partnership With the State." Selected paragraphs:

Many states across America, including Oregon, are struggling with the current higher education paradox—a broad consensus, fueled by the lessons of our own history, that postsecondary opportunity is critical to our collective prosperity, but challenged to sustain the investments needed in public higher education to support such prosperity. As a result of this paradox, state policies have been adopted across the United States that have fundamentally restructured public higher education systems as states and their public institutions negotiate a new balance of autonomy and accountability ... .

In Oregon, there is growing consensus that the state must move aggressively to enact real reform that supports our collective goal to help more Oregonians earn college degrees—reform that fundamentally changes the state’s role so that each institution is better able to fulfill its public mission through increased autonomy and greater accountability to meet the state’s needs ... .

At the University of Oregon, discussions about how we can better serve the state, and enhance our capacity to meet our public responsibility are well under way and include faculty members, students, staff members, alumni, and other stakeholders. We hold a collective view, joined by the University of Oregon Foundation and the University of Oregon Alumni Association Board of Directors, that the University of Oregon must continue to meet its responsibilities as a public university despite the funding environment that makes it difficult to do so. However, to accomplish this goal we need fundamental change to the governance and funding structure of our public university system. The university’s future is fundamentally predicated on our ability to enhance our capacity to provide greater educational opportunities through increased flexibility, autonomy, and stable funding support from the state ... .

An education panel in Utah, sets a goal for 66 percent of Utah residents to hold at least a postsecondary certificate by 2020 - that's the percentage of jobs in that state that are expected to require such credentialing by that time. Here's a Salt Lake Tribune article about that, and here is another - from two days later - that take a look a enrollments and retention in Utah.

The commission, which includes education leaders, lawmakers and members of Utah’s business community, approved that goal Tuesday after months of work. State Superintendent Larry Shumway said about 35 percent of Utah adults now have postsecondary degrees and about 10 to 15 percent have certificates, earned through training in areas such as diesel mechanics or medical assistance.

“We believe it’s an attainable goal without a huge investment,” said William Sederburg, Utah’s commissioner of higher education and a commission member. “We, frankly, don’t have a choice not to do it. If we don’t try to meet these needs, Utah is going to slide down. The economy is going to demand we step up and do this … .”

and

It’s a watershed moment for the institution and our role within the state system,” said a statement from UVU President Matthew Holland. “These numbers bear out what we’ve been feeling for a long time. UVU offers a uniquely attractive educational option for students from Utah Valley and from around the state. The big story is that they are staying. Our biggest jumps come in our junior and senior class.”

Kenneth W. Dobbins is president of Southeast Missouri State University focuses on strategic analysis of academic programs in this brief set of suggestions:

Most of us are faced with, or will be facing, the daunting task of balancing our budgets with less funding from state government. There are several ways to increase revenue and reduce costs, which seem to be easier than reducing or eliminating academic programs.

Examples of these “easier” approaches include: increasing capacity with larger classes; eliminating low enrollment classes; increasing teaching loads; redesigning courses; and adding more temporary or adjunct faculty instead of tenure track. However, the advice in the old saying, “do more or the same with less,” cannot be followed anymore.

With the easier approaches already taken, many of us must critically examine academic programs and ask what are we doing, how are we doing it, and should we be doing it at all. How you do this magic act depends on your campus culture and shared governance expectations, but below are several ideas for your consideration.

The Darden School at the University of Virginia did it. Now, the Anderson School of Management at UCLA wants to do it? Are "ideals" at risk? Imagine the planning going on behind the scenes! Here are:

An Inside Higher Ed story by Scott Jaschik;

A report on the Darden School's change from The Public Interest; and

Hhere's the Anderson school's strategic plan, which may be of interest, although we have been unable to find a draft copy of the specific plan for changing funding methods ... yet.

"The driver here is the decline in state support," said Judy D. Olian, dean of the Anderson School of Management at UCLA. She stressed that she did not view the shift as changing the business school's mission or its connection to the rest of UCLA or the UC system. At this point, she said, state support makes up only about 18 percent of the business school's $96 million annual budget, and she said that percentage overstates the contribution because much of the state support is tuition revenue that must go to the state first now before it is returned to the school. In a new model, that revenue would never leave the business school. In the end, the business school would truly lose less than $6 million a year, Olian said. In the 1970s, she said, about 70 percent of the business school's budget came from the state. "The decline makes it easier to say that the gap is not going to be large and we could overcome it," Olian said. And there's more to it than the dollars. Olian noted that California does not have a state budget for 2010-11 so she doesn't know what her budget will be for the year. It would be much better, she said, to have that information and plan accordingly -- and to raise more money from private sources to offset whatever is lost.

Iza Wojciechowska, writing in Inside Higher Ed, does a comprehensive review of state governor races and the potential impact on public institutions of challenges like the continuing financial impact of the recession and campaigning on illegal immigration:

Four years ago, higher education was one of the top issues in several gubernatorial races. But the economy crashed 13 months after the election, and the recession descended across most of the country, forcing governors to slash funding -- much of it from higher education. According to the most recent State Higher Education Finance report, state funding for higher education fell $2.8 billion in the 2009 fiscal year as a result of the recession. Federal stimulus funds worth $2.3 billion partially offset the costs, but state funding fell another $2.7 billion in 2010 and is likely to continue to fall.

The pressing need to deal with these fiscal problems is likely to force many of the new governors to continue reining in higher education spending. At the same time, however, their states will be feeling pressure to improve college completion, which President Obama has emphasized and which the National Governors Association is championing as its priority this year. The federal government has poured tens of billions of dollars into Pell Grants to do its part, but most of the heavy lifting in the college completion agenda will be left to the states, since the vast majority of American students attend public two- and four-year colleges.

Stephen J. Troop and Nell Gross argue that Canadian higher education is both in a better space and structured more appropriately to thrive instead of just survive the current economic conditions.

Some inevitable belt-tightening aside, Canadian policy makers at the federal and provincial levels are working hard to spare colleges and universities, preserving as much money as possible for research and operating expenditures and keeping tuition costs affordable. The reason? They recognize that a strong higher education system is key to long-term economic competitiveness and a successful society. If the United States doesn’t act soon to shore up its higher education sector, its loss will quickly become Canada’s — and other countries’ — gain.

That American colleges and universities have been hit hard by the economic crisis is clear. Private institutions saw the value of their endowments plummet. Public colleges and universities have fared far worse. The State of California, struggling under a $20 billion budget deficit, cut higher education funding by 6.8 percent in 2009-10, furloughing faculty and staff in both the University of California and California State University systems, reducing the number of slots for entering students, and raising tuition dramatically. Budget shortfalls in New York, New Jersey, Arizona, Florida and elsewhere have likewise meant millions of dollars in campus cutbacks.

Federal stimulus money helped cushion these blows, and an expansion of the Pell Grant program, opposed by many Republicans, has provided some relief to students. But the stimulus money is nearly spent, and with the recovery stalled out, American higher education seems destined for more pain in the years to come.