With the revenues taken in by state governments continuing to drop over the past fiscal year, public universities are finding themselves forced to make massive cutbacks to numerous programs. A particularly troubling legal ruling occurred this week when St. Louis County Circuit Court Judge Kenneth Romines ruled that the University of Missouri will potentially have to return millions of dollars in tuition to in-state residents. While an 1889 state law entitled residents to a free education, the university began charging tuition by collecting educational fees based on credit hours in 1986. Although the statue of limitations only allows students from 1996 to 2001 to collect damages, University of Missouri officials estimate that the costs of such a settlement could be as high as $450 million dollars. The University of Missouri is expected to appeal the ruling, as the remittance of these monies could potentially put the institution in the red for some time.

The first link leads to a recent USA Today news article on the recent court ruling involving the University of Missouri. The second link takes users to a Kansas City Star article on the reduction of their higher education budget this year, which ranks second only to the state of Oregon. The third site is that of the Missouri Department of Higher Education, which contains detailed topical material on the general profile and types of higher education opportunities throughout the state. The fourth link is to a recent report on the affordability of higher education in the United States, created by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. The fifth site leads to a report released in October 2002 that allows users to make state-by-state comparisons with the best performing states through looking at a number of indicators, such as college completion rates and accessibility. The final link will be of particular interest to policymakers and students, as the State PIRGs Higher Education Project works actively to secure more aid for students and contains a host of reports on the practices of educational lenders and guarantors.