Colleges learn to cash in

By James Salzer
 and Laura Diamond


The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

While billions have been cut from state government’s budget during the Great Recession, the University System of Georgia has been on a comparative spending spree.

Spending has gone from 
$5.4 billion in 2007 to a projected $7 billion this year, as colleges built expensive buildings, hired high-priced administrators, bought top-of-the-line technology, added football teams and dozens of new academic programs and even bought a golf course.

To help pay the rising costs, the system raised tuition and fees. Tuition at the University of Georgia has increased by 50 percent since 2008, and student fees have increased 87 percent.

System officials say growing enrollment and cuts in state funding are to blame for students paying hundreds or thousands of dollars more annually.

State lawmakers consider funding higher education a top priority, regularly borrowing hundreds of millions of dollars for construction projects on top of the more than $1.7 billion in taxpayer funding the state provides colleges.

But they have grown frustrated in recent years, arguing that the system isn’t sharing enough in spending cutbacks.

In Sunday’s newspaper, the AJC publishes the first in a six-part series on how the university system spends its money. It’s a story you’ll get only by picking up a copy of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution or logging on to the paper’s iPad app. Subscribe today.