Gee, I haven't read about that in a while and I don't have references handy but my overall impression is that public financing of state Us has not kept up with exploding enrollments over the past 30 years, making everybody's share of the pie much smaller, hence increased dependence on tuition and private funding (donations, revenues from patents) and quite altering the organization and independence of the universities. I believe too that operating costs have gone up in many universities, public and private (more professors? better paid? bigger bureaucracies?).

No time for a google dive so I let that to you :)