Dwindling state support has led some public colleges to beef up their endowments and rev up their fundraising efforts. U.Va.’s endowment of $6.4 billion ranks fifth among public universities and 19th among all schools. (Harvard is tops with $36 billion.)

U.Va. also has a separate “strategic investment fund” of $2.2 billion that was labeled a “slush fund” by a critical former board member.

The message U.Va. is sending is that it wants, and believes it deserves, to play in the same sandbox with the top names in American higher education. As one of the nation’s eight “Public Ivies,” which suggests an Ivy League education at a public school price, it already does, if you consider all those magazine rankings.

But is U.Va. losing sight of its primary mission?

There are three consumer-side outcomes for rising tuition: The family or the student stretches the budget to pay it; more money is borrowed, increasing the debt to be repaid; the family or student is priced out of the school or furthering his or her education entirely.

Most students who graduated from Virginia’s public colleges have loans, often well into five figures, that they have to pay back. That’s quite a burden to carry at the start of a career, and we’re talking about just the undergraduate tab.