No offense, but this makes ZERO sense and is easy to prove.
Suppose you were an adult and your parents had a trust fund for you that paid you $75,000 a year on top of the job that you have that paid you $100,000 per year. You'd be living pretty good, right? Now suppose that your parents' trust fund cut payments down to $25,000 for you. Wouldn't you try to cut down on expenses if this happened? If you acted like a university you'd go out and get 10 more credit cards and INCREASE your spending.
To prove this out let's look at Kentucky.
- In state tuition at UK was around $2,600 in 1997. Out of state was $7,300.
- In state tuition is now over $12,000 and for out of state it's $31,000
Out of state tuition is not supported by the state government. And in 26 years that tuition has gone up 4X. That's basically the same rate that in-state went up.
It's 100% the spending; not the lack of funding.