In 1976, the average undergraduate resident tuition at UW System 4-year campuses was $556 per year. That covered 24.5% of the annual cost of $2,457 per student. The state of Wisconsin tax payers paid the remaining $1,703, or 75.5% of the total cost.

By 2009, the annual cost of educating an undergraduate student in the UW System had risen to $10,013 per student.  An undergraduate tuition at UW System 4-year campuses average $6,031 , or 60.2 percent of the total average cost per student. Wisconsin taxpayers paid the remaining 39.8%.

To put this in another perspective, in 1976, a student working at minimum wage had to work 264 to earn a year’s tuition. In 2009, a student working at minimum wage needed to work 832 hours to earn a year’s tuition.

To find historical data for Wisconsin resident tution for an undergraduatee athe UW System shools, we used the following PDF: http://www.uwsa.edu/budplan/tuition/Working-Old%20Files/TuitionHistory.pdf