Since 2003, the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO) has produced the annual State Higher Education Finance (SHEF) report to broaden understanding and enable analysis of state- and national-level funding and enrollment trends over time. The SHEF report provides the earliest possible review of state funding for higher education for the most recently completed fiscal year. The primary purpose of SHEF is to help state higher education executives, policymakers, policy analysts, researchers, and higher education administrators make sense of complex finance data. SHEF contextualizes the current funding climate and comparisons across states and years, enabling users to better understand the trends in higher education finance over time and how these trends differ across the nation. However, the SHEF dataset currently does not account for federal funding for higher education.
The SHEF Expansion project combines federal and state funding sources to create a complete picture of public higher education institutional resources and add a much-needed equity focus to higher education finance conversations by leveraging a trusted source for higher education finance data to show inequities in funding levels across student and institution types. Consolidating higher education finance data into a single platform helps inform federal and state policy by providing clear and accessible data and trends on the current and historical status of public higher education financing. This project also provides system and state higher education leaders and policymakers with the data necessary to justify and determine equitable funding strategies and provide institutions with the data and insights needed to advocate for increased resources from the state.
Data Downloads
Download datasets at the national, state, sector, state-sector, modified Carnegie classification, and institution level for 2008 through 2022. Refer to the SHEF Expansion Codebook for additional information on variables and methodology. Please contact Rachel Burns at rburns@sheeo.org with questions about the data.
SHEF Expansion Dashboard
Explore federal, state, and local IPEDS finance and financial aid data in the SHEF Expansion Dashboard. This dashboard examines funding disparities across higher education institutions, focusing on changes in government funding over time, differences by Carnegie classification and IPEDS sector, and the composition of revenue sources.
SHEF Expansion Reports
Inequality and Inequity in General Public Operating Appropriations
This report uses the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) to rigorously analyze inequalities and inequities in funding levels by student race/ethnicity and income. Inequities in general public operating appropriations by race/ethnicity and income category are compared across established methodologies in the field of higher education finance. Findings from each approach are considered in the context of broader implications for inequities in public higher education funding.
Trends in State, Local, Student, and Grant Shares of Education Revenues
Although the SHEF report includes federal stimulus funding to higher education during the Great Recession (2009-2012) and the COVID-19 pandemic (2020-2023) that data users can choose to include or exclude, the Pell Grant and other federal grant aid are not collected separately from student tuition and fee revenue. This means federal grant aid cannot be differentiated or excluded from the share that students and families contribute to funding public higher education through tuition and fees. Given this limitation of not being able to break out federal grant aid from student tuition and fee revenue, there is much to learn about the role of consistent (rather than emergency) federal contributions to funding higher education through student grant aid, both over time and across states and sectors. In this analysis, we use federal higher education datasets to distinguish the role of grant aid, including the Pell Grant, from state, local, and student shares of funding to support public higher education.
Federal and State Funding for Minority-Serving Institutions
This report uses publicly available federal award data for MSIs (FY2008 to FY2024) from the U.S. Department of Education to discuss trends in state and federal funding for MSI institutions. This report and its accompanying institutional-level MSI dataset are a unique tool for state and federal policymakers, researchers, and institutional leaders to analyze trends in their state funding and support for these designated institutions. This report provides an overview of federal award changes since the 2008 reauthorization of the Higher Education Act (HEA), an analysis of trends observed from the data, and how the findings could inform future funding and support for MSIs.