In 48 U.S. states, government spending on each college student is still below where it was before the recession that ended almost six years ago. Now, at least seven governors propose cutting deeper.

Republicans in Wisconsin and Louisiana, whose governors hold White House ambitions, as well as Illinois, Arizona, Alaska and West Virginia, all would reduce support for colleges and universities in budgets under consideration this year. Connecticut’s Democratic leader, Dannel Malloy, has joined them. In Kansas, shortfalls induced by tax cuts championed by Republican Governor Sam Brownback led to a 2 percent cut to universities set to take effect this week.

The proposals are part of a decades-long shift of making students pay for an increasing share of postsecondary education, leading to tuition increases at public institutions that outpace those at private schools. They come as a diploma, a driver of social and economic mobility that fueled the country’s post-war boom, is more important than ever to both individual and state prosperity.

“When we’re saying more and more Americans need to have this education, we’re pricing it so that the vast group that has never had it before can’t afford it,” said George Pernsteiner, president of the State Higher Education Executive Officers association.

Two-thirds of the 165 million U.S. jobs in 2020 will require education beyond high school, according to Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce. In 1973, fewer than a third did.

Students and families are shouldering a bigger share of the burden. Tuition accounted for about 48 percent of public higher- education revenue in 2013, the latest year for which data are available, according to Pernsteiner’s organization, which is based in Boulder, Colorado. That’s double what it was in 1988.

Margaret Naczek, an 18-year-old freshman at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said Wednesday that she’s paying for her own education with help from her parents and they can’t afford to pay much more.

“It’s a huge concern,” Naczek, a journalism student, said in an interview at the student union.

The 18-month recession that ended in June 2009 shredded state budgets and eroded college money. While most have reinvested, the average state still spends 23 percent less than before, according to a May report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which analyzes how fiscal decisions affect the poor. Only Alaska and North Dakota, whose budgets have been padded by booming oil and gas production, spend more.

Arizona cut more than any other, spending 48 percent less per student in fiscal 2014 than in 2008, according to the center. Facing an at least $1 billion deficit, Governor Doug Ducey seeks to lower spending on universities by $75 million and on community colleges by $9 million in the next fiscal year.

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