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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Report: Oregon Among States with Biggest College Budget Cuts

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Thursday, May 14, 2015   

PORTLAND, Ore. - Oregon ranks sixth in the nation in the amount the state has cut from higher education funding since the onset of the recession.

According to a new report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, tuition has gone up an average of 29 percent nationally, or about $2,000 more per student since 2008 – but in Oregon, tuition has risen more than 31 percent.

Policy analyst and report co-author Michael Mitchell says in inflation-adjusted dollars, the state spends about one-third less per student than it did seven years ago, which may say more about the state's revenue sources than about education.

"In Oregon, you're talking about a state without a sales tax," he says. "In essence, they've got a built-in handicap to their budget and revenue system that actually makes it much more difficult to make the investments that help keep tuition down."

Four schools in the state college system have already proposed tuition hikes for the next academic year. Eastern Oregon and Southern Oregon universities and the Oregon Institute of Technology all are asking for resident undergraduate tuition hikes of about five percent. Western Oregon University wants an increase of two percent.

Public comments will be taken at a meeting of the Oregon State Board of Higher Education at Eastern Oregon University in La Grande on June 5.

Mitchell says the economic downsides of higher tuition go beyond the debt. They include people passing up colleges or career paths they feel they can't afford, and delaying decisions like home ownership and starting a business.

"There's interesting research out there now looking at the impact of high levels of student debt and the likelihood that a young person will try their hand at entrepreneurship," he says. "That's not only an impact for that individual student, that's missed potential jobs for local communities and states."

The report goes on to note things are slowly improving for higher education budgets around the nation. Just this year, Oregon budgeted almost 10 percent more per student than the previous year.


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