An analysis of the privatization of public AAU institutions and their changing resource acquisition before and after the Great Recession

Thesis (Ph.D.) - Indiana University, School of Education, 2015Public institutions have historically adapted to their changing external environment in order to try to best serve their students and achieve their goals. Part of this adaption included dealing with decreasing state support. While state funding has shown increasing patterns of support to higher education after a recession, the Great Recession proved different. As a result, public institutions have become increasingly privatized with increasing proportions of their revenue coming from students and declining proportions coming from the state. The purpose of this study was to examine the changing state appropriations and tuition revenue that public AAU institutions received before and after the start of the Great Recession in order to better understand whether they received a changing amount of total revenue per student and simultaneously became more heavily funded by students. This study used IPEDS variables and all data was collected between 2003-04 and 2011-12 to create the three main variables used to answer six research questions. The three main variables included: gross-tuition revenue per FTE, net-tuition revenue per FTE, and state appropriations revenue per FTE. All data was analyzed through descriptive statistics. The results of this study showed that on average public AAU institutions received increasing amounts of total revenue per FTE between 2003-04 and 2011-12 in terms of tuition revenue and state appropriations per FTE combined. Many of these institutions also became increasingly privatized during this time as there were increases in the proportion of the total revenue that came from tuition revenue per FTE. The findings from this study also showed that while all institutions became increasingly privatized after the start of the Great Recession, an increasing number of institutions began operating with decreasing levels of total revenue per FTE. Others received an increasing amount of total revenue as a result of increases in tuition revenue per FTE. Regardless, this study showed that students have continued to bear increasing proportions of the cost of higher education. It also provided a new perspective on the amount of revenue that these institutions believed they needed in order to continue to provide quality education to their students