[_delirium]

One thing missing in this analysis is the contribution of more stingy state funding to the decrease in affordability of public universities. For example, the University of California is actually cheaper per-student now to operate than it was in 1990, by about 25%: if you take the total budget, divide by total students, and adjust both numbers for inflation, the result now considerably lower. And that increased overall efficiency comes even despite an increase in administrators.

So if the per-student budget is lower, why are per-student fees much higher, rather than 25% lower? Well, the state portion of the funding has declined even faster: from $16,500 per student to somewhere in the $8-9k range in the upcoming budget (inflation-adjusted). So tuition has gone up to compensate.

The situation differs at different universities, but in the UC system it's close to being a dollar-for-dollar replacement of declining state funding by increased tuition.