<p>A) How is money allocated to help fund each student who attends a public university? Where does it come from? </p>
<p>1) Is it mostly from the property tax of all California home owners, does that explain why the UC’s in turn give admission preference to qualified in-state residents? </p>
<p>2) Or does the money also come from the California sales tax? So every time someone buys a soda, groceries, clothes, a very very minute fraction of that tax goes towards funding our state universities?</p>
<p>3) How much federal aid is part of the picture?</p>
<p>B) Do private schools on the other hand also get public aid? I’ve read some accounts that say yes and others that say no or very little.</p>
<p>Good questions!</p>
<p>I saw on the front page of MyUCLA that UCLA is “owned by the residents of California” and I gasped. It makes sense but it didn’t register in my head until I saw that!</p>
<p>I don’t know the entire picture, but part of the answer is certainly from grants. The economics are complicated, but grant money given to a student against tuition is certainly a form of support for the schools. And of course that comes from both the state–well, sort of now–and federal level.</p>
<p>Probably all of the above. The state gets tax revenue from many different sources and then a budget is made. Part of the state budget is allocated for education. The question that still remains in my mind is how that is distributed and whether all schools get the same amount.</p>