Higher ed is getting a smaller slice of the budget pie. Why?

Earlier this month, after University of Washington President Michael Young accepted a job as head of Texas A&M University, we compared the amount of money Washington invests in higher education to the amount invested in public universities in the Lone Star State.

Among other things, the comparison showed that Washington is spending less per student on higher education than it did in the 1980s, when inflation is taken into account — and that it spends less per student today than Texas does.