Public colleges love out of state students because they typically pay more in tuition.

The New York Times reports.

Public Colleges Chase Out-of-State Students, and Tuition

Over three generations, the Michael family forged a deep bond with the University of California, dating back nearly 50 years to when Jay Dee Michael Sr. was the university system’s vice president and chief lobbyist.

Family members proudly displayed degrees from the campuses in Los Angeles, Davis, Berkeley and Santa Barbara. And when Mr. Michael died last year, his family asked that memorial donations go to a U.C. Davis institute. Recently, though, the relationship has soured, a victim of the economic forces buffeting public universities.

Jay Dee Michael Jr. said he might never feel the same again after his son was rejected from several U.C. campuses.

“I have blue and gold running through my blood,” Mr. Michael told a State Assembly hearing here in March. “But I can tell you that when I get calls now from U.C. Davis, as an alum, I’m not giving a dime.”

A state audit in March reinforced what many California parents already suspected: On a constant hunt for more revenue, the prestigious University of California system gave favorable admissions treatment to thousands of higher-paying out-of-state and foreign students, to the detriment of Californians.

As a result, admissions to the system have become a bipartisan political issue in California, where the Legislature recently moved to link university funding to enrolling additional California residents.

But at its core, the discontent in California, which is also developing in other states, reflects a broader, fundamental breakdown in the traditional operation of the public university. And it highlights troubling questions about affordability and access, much of the impetus behind the announcement by Hillary Clinton on Wednesday that she was embracing a large part of Bernie Sanders’s proposal to provide free tuition at in-state public colleges.