Idaho ranks poorly in a new national report that charts reduced state investment in higher education and rising tuition across the country. The report found that state spending on higher ed per student in Idaho remains 30.8 percent below pre-recession levels. When adjusted for inflation, that’s the seventh-highest percentage in the country.

Total state spending per student, also inflation adjusted, dropped $3,290 from 2008 to 2016, the report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found, a dollar figure that ranked sixth-highest in the nation.

In the 1973-74 school year, the cost of tuition and fees at Boise State University was $178 per semester for Idaho residents, said Idaho Center for Fiscal Policy Director Lauren Necochea. In today’s dollars, that’s $959.20.

“But current tuition and fees are over three and half times higher than that. This is despite the fact that median household income is only 7 percent higher than in 1973 when adjusted for inflation. We’ve departed from our historical levels of support for higher education by shifting the costs. Today, Idaho students and families pay much more than previous generations.”

The report compares the current school year, 2015-16, to 2008, prior to the recession, so it doesn’t include the 8 percent increase in general fund higher-ed spending that lawmakers authorized this year for the next school year.

Nationwide, the report found that tuition as a percent of total cost of higher education grew from just over 20 percent in 1989 to nearly 50 percent in 2013, dropping only slightly by 2015.

This year, the amount of student tuition and fees collected at Boise State University, $92.85 million, exceeded the state general fund appropriation of $84.75 million, according to state budget documents. Tuition and fees were approaching the general fund total at Idaho State University, the University of Idaho and Lewis-Clark State College.

Question: Did you or your children attend an Idaho college?

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