"budget gimmickry" in RI?
Nah, I don't believe it. You must be one of those ray-zist demi-gogs.

May 4, 1886 - Lest we forget.
Following is excerpted from the Encyclopedia Brittanica:

Haymarket Riot, also called Haymarket Affair or Haymarket Massacre, violent confrontation between police and labour protesters in Chicago on May 4, 1886, that became a symbol of the international struggle for workers’ rights. It has been associated with May Day (May 1) since its designation as International Workers’ Day by the Second International in 1889.
On May 3 one person was killed and several injured as police intervened to protect strikebreakers and intimidate strikers during a union action at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company that was part of a national campaign to secure an eight-hour workday. To protest police brutality, anarchist labour leaders called a mass meeting the next day in Haymarket Square. That gathering was pronounced peaceful by Chicago Mayor Carter Harrison, who attended as an observer. After Harrison and most of the demonstrators departed, a contingent of police arrived and demanded that the crowd disperse. At that point a bomb was thrown by an individual never positively identified, and police responded with random gunfire. Seven police officers were killed and 60 others wounded before the violence ended; civilian casualties have been estimated at four to eight dead and 30 to 40 injured.
The Haymarket Riot created widespread hysteria directed against immigrants and labour leaders. Amid the panic, August Spies and seven other anarchists were convicted of murder on the grounds that they had conspired with or aided an unknown assailant. Many of the so-called “Chicago Eight,” however, were not even present at the May 4 event, and their alleged involvement was never proved. Nevertheless, Spies and three other defendants were hanged on Nov. 11, 1887, while another defendant committed suicide.

Comparing other funds and expenditures, it sure looks like wringing out overhead plus consolidation and elimination of duplicate courses could help close the gap. RI doesn't appear to really want publicly funded higher education. I'd be surprised if belt-tightening couldn't replace the stingy state contribution if only the state let them go private.
There is a real bubble in higher education - a lot of degrees simply aren't worth the money. That money comes from non-dischargeable student loans that will saddle many naive kids with long term debt far into adulthood. That's a whole separate issue.

Public higher education is swirling the same toilet bowl as K-12 is. The only solution is to sell these colleges in an auction. The money can be used as part of a fiscal renovation of the state.

This would be in the best interests of students. Only when colleges are forced to compete on the basis of value will they improve their product and cut their prices to affordable levels.

What we have in higher education today is exactly the same market-distortion dynamic that Chris Dodd and Barney Frank sponsored in the housing finance market.

OTL,

If you're looking for a May 4 event of true historical proportions to celebrate, there's Margaret Thatcher's becoming Prime Minister of the UK on May 4, 1979, formally arresting the long decline into socialism that had been occurring in the West.

Though in terms of overall historical impact, it's hard to beat the drawing of the Papal Line of Demarcation in the New World on May 4, 1493.

May 4 is also the day before Andrew combined inanity with stupidity and insipidity in an incredible stretch of non-sequiturs.
OTL

You don't see any irony in leaving that comment at all, do you?

Lefty wouldn't recognize a non-sequitur if it hit him between the eyes. You can tell because he and his cronies spread non-sequiturs all over AR and believe they are persuading everyone.

Remember, they don't teach logic any more in the public schools. All that judgment is bad for self-esteem.

Andrew,
I see an avoidance of the suffering that unionization has gone through to get established, and an avoidance of the current demonization of the union movement. I see the irony as a means of avoiding serious comment.
OTL

Of course, Lefty has in these very pages drawn a moral equivalent between the "demonization" of Al Qaeda and the "demonization" of the government-employee unions. Shows you what kind of moral standards guide the Left.

To paraphrase Freud, sometimes a demon is just a demon.