Taxpayer support for public universities, measured per student, has plunged more precipitously since 2001 than at any time in two decades, and several university presidents are calling the decline a de facto privatization of the institutions that played a crucial role in the creation of the American middle class. Graham Spanier, president of Pennsylvania State University , said this year that skyrocketing tuition was a result of what he called \"public higher education\'s slow slide toward privatization.\" Other educators have made similar assertions, some avoiding the term \"privatization,\" but nonetheless describing a crisis that they say is transforming public universities. At an academic forum last month, John D. Wiley, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at Madison , said that during the years after World War II , America built the world\'s greatest system of public higher education. \"We\'re now in the process of dismantling all that,\" Wiley said. The share of all public universities\' revenues deriving from state and local taxes declined to 64 percent in 2004 from 74 percent in 1991. At many flagship universities, the percentages are far smaller. About 25 percent of the University of Illinois \' budget comes from the state. Michigan finances about 18 percent of the University of Michigan \'s revenues. The taxpayer share of revenues at the University of Virginia is about 8 percent.