I've begun to regard statements of "decrease funding" by media reports with skepticism. Usually "cuts in spending" means "reductions in the projected growth rate of spending". I believe that absolute state funding of public universities is on the decline though in the last few years, but its important to note the levels in a historic context. If you increase spending substantially, and then proceed to decrease it in the following years, that's not the same as a steady erosion of funding over decades.
It appears as though there was a huge spike in funding around the time of the financial crisis, and now it has been dropping over the last few years back to levels closer to that of the 1990s [0]. Not sure why most articles point to the high water mark of the last 5-10 years as the benchmark for cuts.
You don't even have to leave the first paragraph to see that there has been a real and significant decline over decades: "The University of California at Berkeley, one of the leading public research universities in the nation, now receives only about 13 percent of its budget from state appropriations, compared with about 50 percent a few decades ago."
How does that indicate that the actual amount of spending went down? That just says that the growth in the allocation from the government has not kept up with the growth from other sources.
It appears as though there was a huge spike in funding around the time of the financial crisis, and now it has been dropping over the last few years back to levels closer to that of the 1990s [0]. Not sure why most articles point to the high water mark of the last 5-10 years as the benchmark for cuts.
[0] http://www.randalolson.com/2014/05/20/skyrocketing-student-e...