That's false. The Federal Government has massively increased its funding via guaranteed loans. What changed is how the government is doing the funding: now the Feds are printing huge profits - more than Wells Fargo and JP Morgan's annual profits combined - via the interest. The net result is a very large increase in the amount of dollars flowing toward universities over the last 15 years courtesy of the Federal Government's guarantees. Further, the Federal Government increasingly owns most of the student loans that exist.

Federal funding didn't decrease, the nature of the money being made available shifted into a very easy to get loan that the Feds now make money off of. Not only do they print huge profits on it, they also ensure the laws remain such that you can't discharge the debt, to their own benefit. This has helped replace the red ink that Social Security is now generating, as previously the Feds were stealing from SS funding instead of actually safe-guarding the inbound revenue flows. Now they can't steal from the positive SS flows, so they had to come up with a 'revenue replacement' - what better way than to hitch young workers to massive debt they can't get rid of, yielding a perpetual interest bonanza for Federal spending. It will generate over half a trillion dollars in interest for the Feds in the next ten years.