This report presents the key trend indicators of public higher education systems for the fiscal year 1994-95, and national trend data for the years 1978-95, for all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Two brief introductory sections summarize the more exceptional findings, and define the purpose and design of the study and the indicators used. With text, data tables, and scatter diagrams the first three chapters detail: (1) environmental conditions--tax wealth available to support public services, at-risk population, potential resident enrollment load, the amount of public higher education provided, and comparative cost indexes; (2) performance measures such as productivity, equitable opportunity, financial access, overall funding effort, balance between state and family payment effort, and intrasystem allocation; and (3) operational factors, such as student migration policies, quantity versus quality, class size relative to faculty salary, retention rates, legislative funding actions, balancing funding sources, and type and size of system design. In Chapter 4 nine tables provide national trend data (base year=1978) for: number of resident students enrolled, inflation, state tax wealth, legislative funding action, family payment effort, total funding of public higher education, balance between class size and faculty salary, quantity versus quality, and the four major trends in the public education sector. Two appendixes provide comparative peer state selection factors and basic state data. (CH)