It’s the state of Missouri.

Long before you arrived here from New York, the Missouri Legislature decided that higher education funding was no longer a state priority. Twenty years ago, tuition at the University of Missouri-Columbia was about $3,000. Now it’s more than three times that, and state funding is about the same as it was then. As a percentage of the state budget, Missouri lawmakers spend significantly less on colleges and universities than their colleagues did two decades ago.

Two years ago, then-Missouri state Treasurer Clint Zweifel offered a solution to this problem. It was the kind of public policy shift that can change a state’s trajectory.

Called the Missouri Promise, Zweifel’s idea was simple:

Every Missouri student who graduated with a 3.0 grade point average could go to a public university in the state tuition-free, if they also maintained a 3.0 while in college.

Zweifel wasn’t running for re-election. He wasn’t seeking higher office. The wonkish Democrat was trying to get a state that had consistently been cutting higher education funding over a decade to change its thinking.