Irrelevant

That Eagle story from Sunday included the graphic above. Vision 1920's analysts say the red part is a combination of in-state and out-of-state students. In state tuition and fees for some peer institutions:

School	2008-09 In-state tuition and fees
Penn State	$13,706
U Illinois	$12,240
U Michigan	$11,037
U Minnesota	$10,634
Ohio State U	$8,679
UC-Davis	$8,635
UT-Austin	$8,090
UC-San Diego	$8,062
TAMU	$7,844
Purdue U	$7,750
U Wisconsin	$7,658
UC-Berkeley	$7,656
UCLA	$7,551
Georgia Tech	$6,040
U North Carolina	$5,397
U Florida	$3,790

UNC shows higher per capita support from tuition and fees because about 20% of Tar Heel freshmen are from out of state, while only ~5% of Aggie undergrads aren't Texas residents. However:

Stallings said that other universities' financial situations were irrelevant.

"I am not concerned about what other universities are doing as much as what we can do for A&M," he said. "We have no agenda other than trying to have the best university we possibly can and make it as affordable as we possibly can."

because we know that none of those other states cares about keeping costs down and making their schools affordable.