I agree UA to UT was probably not a fair comparison. UAA+UAF to UTSA is, in my opinion, a reasonable comparison (in terms of programs offered and research expenditures). If you want to narrow the scope further, we can look at expenditures categorized as instruction: UTSA $4759/student, UAA $3519/student (COL adjusted).  Couldn't find UAF's instructional budget.  Of course institutions will differ, but how do we know where UA stands (i.e. efficient, inefficient, average) if we don't identify similar institutions and compare?  To your comment on student outcomes, do you mean specific program outcomes, or, institutional outcomes (i.e. graduation rate)? If you mean the latter, UAA and UTSA are not a good match, as UAA is open-access and UTSA is quite selective. Also, UA has many more non-traditional students that skew the federal (6 yr) graduation rate. If you want to make an argument for imposing higher entrance requirements across UA, I think that would be an interesting debate.