By last spring, most faculty members at public institutions of higher education were justifiably pessimistic about their likely salary increases for the 2003-04 academic year. Many states were running large budget deficits for the second or third year in a row and no longer had reserves to draw upon to balance their budgets. These shortfalls resulted in reduced fiscal 2004 appropriations for higher education in twenty-three U.S. states compared with those of the previous year; in only fifteen states did increases in higher education appropriations exceed the rate of inflation. Nationally, state appropriations for higher education in fiscal 2004 declined by 2.1 percent, the first such decline in eleven years. This cut followed a year in which state appropriations for higher education rose by only 1.2 percent. The review of historical faculty salary increases presented in this article shows that although faculty salary increases obviously affect increases in tuition and fees, they cannot be blamed for the extent of the tuition-and-fee increases seen over the past quarter century. (Contains 22 endnotes, 22 tables, and 2 figures.)