This digest of a full-length report provides a review of state level budgeting for higher education in terms of the underlying interplay of human and external forces coupled with factors that are present in the budgeting process itself. The environmental context includes historical, political, economic, and demographic factors. These factors…

Drawing information from federal statistical sources, this digest summarizes recent changes in rural demographic and economic conditions relevant to rural school systems. Since the early 1990s, the U.S. economy has been strong, and rural areas have been growing at the same rate or faster than the nation's economic pace. Benefiting from the steady…

since the economic difficulties of the 1980s and 1990s, community colleges have had to reconcile limited resources with open door admissions policies and a broad institutional mission. College budgets have not generally increased sufficiently to compensate for rising costs, with state-level financial support for higher education falling by 9.5% to…