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by jivatmanx 4956 days ago
Public universities are hugely subsidized by the state.
2 comments

You wish. It used to be that way, and it used to make up for the comparatively small endowment, but it isn't the case any longer.
In many places states are just another donor to their public universities, budget-wise.
" According to the Delta Cost Project, most of the nation’s public research universities had more than half their costs paid by tuition in 2008, and other four-year public institutions were hovering near the 50 percent mark. With three more years of tuition increases, they, too, have probably passed it, said Jane V. Wellman, executive director of the project, leaving only community colleges as mostly state-financed."

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/24/education/24tuition.html?p...

≈50% is a fairly large amount of subsidy.

But it's not 50% subsidy, it's just 50% things other than tuition. There's also various donations and grants.