Dr. Richard Vedder's latest book Going Broke By Degree: Why College Costs Too Much is a great resource for anyone who wants to find out more about how government increases the cost and decreases the value of their education. All those TABOR opponents complaining about "cuts" (ie., limits on) to higher education government funding should read this book! Less government money means colleges must compete for more private money -- and free-market competition is always a good thing for consumers, in this case students.

For an excerpt from Dr. Vedder's interview on (and I laugh) NPR visit the Ludwig von Mises Institute blog. And, if you're in the mood to pick-on Michigan when they're down...

Due to the presence of state funding, universities are highly inefficient institutions that face few incentives to do things in a less costly manner. By any reasonable measure, higher-education productivity per worker has fallen over the past generation, while it has risen considerably in more competitive areas of the economy. Most increased funds have not gone for instructional items, such as smaller class sizes or tutorial work, but for hiring more staff, general pay hikes, easier faculty schedules, fancier facilities and greater intercollegiate athletics subsidies. The proportion of kids going to college is about the same in states with high government spending on universities as it is in those with more modest support.

The statistical results are confirmed by case studies. For example, compare Michigan with the two other largest Midwestern industrial states, Illinois and Ohio. Of the three states in fiscal 1980, Michigan spent the largest proportion of its personal income on state universities (one-third more than Illinois, for example). Over the next two decades, Michigan dramatically increased its already above-average commitment to universities, so that it had the sixth-highest proportion in the nation by 2000. In 2000, Michigan was spending 2.34 percent of its personal income on state government support for higher education, nearly double Illinois’s 1.26 percent and well above Ohio’s 1.58 percent.