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Comment by JPKab | Hacker News Reader

The part of the article that alarmed me the most was that the state of Arizona has reduced state funding for the university by 50% over the past 5 years....

Wow. The baby boomers really are gutting the system that gave they benefited from.

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I don't think it's just Arizona that's pinching the public universities.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/01/23/state-funds-hi...

New Hampshire had a 41% one year drop!

It's worse than that. There are three public universities which receive funding: ASU, University of Arizona, and Northern Arizona University. So it's not just one school. And Arizona schools may not be front page news, but these are institutions with big contributions to Mars rovers, astronomy and biotech. For instance, Lawrence Krass works at ASU.

It's really tragic how little Arizona higher education is supported, given their accomplishments.

It's even worse than that. States are not only reducing their funding, but the funding they do provide is nowhere near the operating requirements for major universities. Consider my alma mater, the University of Virginia, which receives about $8500 in funding per full-time student from the state (so roughly $150m/yr). This is <6% of their $2.6b annual operating budget[1]. Compare this to the 45% of funds that comes from health center patient revenues, or the 10-11% that each come from research/grants and gifts.[2] Pretty ridiculous. Spending is out of control, of course, but even not-for-profit schools are competing against each other for talent & grants, and the best ways they seem to know how involve huge infrastructure & technology investments, not to mention extra perks for students/faculty/staff.

[1] http://www.virginia.edu/finance101/state.html [2] http://www.virginia.edu/finance101/budgeted.html

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