Jenna Robinson and I got tired of the complaint that state legislatures are starving their state universities. The complaint is usually phrased the way John L. Pulley did in 2012, “A quarter century ago, state funds covered 78 percent of the cost of college, says Julie Bell, education group director for the National Conference of State Legislatures. Today the figure is 60 percent.“

Could it be that instead of cutting appropriations (the implication of such remarks), perhaps revenues were growing and as a result the state appropriations became a smaller part of the total?

That seems to be the case as the chart made from Department of Education IPEDS indicates.