Some mistakenly believe that Texas A&M and the University of Texas did not really suffer significant shortfalls to their funding needs because they, along with Prairie View A&M, were the only universities entitled to share in the operational support funding (i.e., the Available University Fund) tied to the Permanent University Fund. While the AUF funding was and is helpful to those three universities, that line of reasoning was, and still is, uninformed because the funding needs of Texas A&M far exceeded the modest increases in revenue realized from the PUF. In fact, the share of funding from the state has decreased from over 50 percent to 27 percent while A&M students’ and parents’ share has more than doubled to 32 percent.
