The financial pressure on university students has been growing across the U.S. for several decades. At the national level, inflation-adjusted tuition and fees at a public four-year university rose 270 percent from 1977 to 2017, while the federal minimum wage fell by 24 percent. While standards of living generally rose over those 40 years, the financial pressure on university students sharply accelerated. Earlier generations were more fortunate. Summer work plus part-time work no longer enable graduation debt-free. From 2001 to 2017, tuition and fees for undergraduates at the University of Montana are up 103 percent with the CPI rising 39 percent. In 2001, a student working 40 hours for 12 weeks at the Montana minimum wage could cover 81 percent of annual tuition and fees. By 2017, even with a rise of 58 percent in the minimum wage, such summer work covered less than 63 percent. The price of textbooks is up 150 percent in the same period. Data from 2014 show 67 percent of Montana graduates with debt averaging $26,946. Whereas students may be paying their share, the state is not. Students pay more and get less. Unrestricted revenue (tuition, fees, state allocations) per full-time-equivalent student in the Montana university system in 2015 was $10,783 – second-lowest nationally. The national average was $2,100 higher, with neighboring states Idaho, North Dakota and Wyoming higher by $1,069, $3,671 and $9,550, respectively. The percentage of the total covered by student tuition in Montana was significantly higher than in neighboring states. Moreover, legislatures in 13 states with lower median household incomes (including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Maine, New Mexico, Oklahoma and North Carolina) allocated substantially more state funds per FTE than Montana’s legislature. Montana is winning the race to the bottom. University funding in Montana lags a national field that is itself lagging. If other state university systems were healthy it would be less of a problem. Unfortunately, public hi