Your faculty union’s affiliate, the National Education Association, has analyzed each state’s yearly appropriations for public higher education from 1991 to 2016 compared with tuition and enrollment. The charts linked below show how state support for public higher education in Florida has declined while tuition and fees have increased. As a result, while Florida college students in 1991 were paying for about a fifth of their education through tuition and fees, now they are paying for more than a third. Needless to say, such lack of state investment disproportionately impacts first generation and working-class students, many of whom attend FAU,
The faculty union is concerned with this issue because it affects the working (teaching) conditions of faculty as surely as it affects the learning conditions of our students. When students are financially stressed because of higher tuition and fees, the quality of their education declines, and faculty must respond.
Click below for the data: