And yet, the film shows that in at least a handful of places (and in more since the film’s completion), debates about how much funding colleges deserve and what that funding should be used for have shaped state policies that affect how major flagship universities operate.

The big-picture take is one of the film’s strengths, and something Mims says people have been surprised about since its release. In an hour and a half, the film attempts to point out how, across the country, conservative groups like the Texas Public Policy Foundation and people like Wallace Hall and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, have sought to scale back funding for programs and even professors.

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, state and local dollars made up about 54 percent of the money schools used for teaching and instruction in 2015. While states have added some funding since the recession, it’s still about 18 percent per student lower than it was in 2008, according to the center.

How those debates are presented is a different question, and while Mims says he’s tried hard to portray the different sides, the film has received its share of criticism from conservatives who think they’re being unfairly attacked. Thomas K. Lindsay, the director of the Center for Higher Education at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, one of the groups whose influence on how the state’s universities are run is explored in the film, told the Chronicle of Higher Education, "This notion of a right-wing conspiracy—that years ago, people got together in a darkened room to figure out how to starve public universities, and when they fail, blame them for it—doesn’t even warrant an attack." (Mims, for his part, said he found Lindsay’s comments “ironic” given that he “declined” to be interviewed for the film.)

On a personal level, Mims thinks higher education “should be a public good.” Why, he asked, are states divesting in institutions that “have been remarkable engines for the development of the country and the world? That’s not hyperbole.”

He devotes significant time in the film to academics who worry that state divestment in higher education will give private funders with political motivations too much power over what and how students learn. Mims worries, too, that poor but brilliant students will lose what access they’ve gained to top schools if some of the policies touted by conservatives— income-based repayment of student loans, for instance, or the widespread accreditation of non-traditional classes offered by businesses and even churches—become reality, because he fears investors won’t see such students as smart investments.

But he also devotes time to reformers like Frederick Hess, the director of education-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, who says in the documentary, "If somebody wants to write about sexually dystopian themes in 14th-century epic poetry, I think that’s fine. I have no earthly idea why taxpayers are supposed to subsidize this.”