The nation’s best-known public universities have been on an unfettered spending spree. Over the past two decades, they erected new skylines comprising snazzy academic buildings and dorms. They poured money into big-time sports programs and hired layers of administrators. And they passed the bill along to students. To examine colleges’ spending patterns, WSJ supplemented figures from audited financial statements from 2002, 2012 and 2022 with data from public information requests and other documents. All numbers in the analysis were adjusted to 2022 dollars. 📷: Jon Cherry for WSJ, Reuters, Alamy, The University of Oklahoma, photo illustration by Emil Lendof for WSJ #colleges #studentdebt #publicuniversity #pennstate #universityofkentucky #universityofoklahoma #wsj #wallstreetjournal #thewallstreetjournal