Red Ink's inbox was flooded last week as readers protested the notion that community college students' education should continue to be subsidized by taxpayers at the current rate - or even be subsidized at all.

College students last week stampeded the Capitol, demanding that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger rescind his plan to increase community college fees from $18 to $26 per unit.

Lori Richter, an Irvine mother with two children at private universities, points out that the cost of University of California law school is about half that of private-school tuition - for undergraduates. One reader who didn't leave his name challenged Red Ink to compare California's university subsidies to other states.

Red Ink was not able to find an organization that had done this comparison. The state's nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office is working on a detailed comparison, but that won't be done until mid-April.

But based on 2002-03 data taken from the Chronicle of Higher Education, we did some basic calculation and came up with this: California ranks right in the middle nationally - 26th - in its subsidies for students at public colleges.

Taxpayers here pay an average of $4,250 per full-time student (graduate and undergraduate), which is the average across all three systems: the University of California, California State University and the 109 community colleges. Alaskans paid the most at $7,611 per student, New Hampshire the least at $1,801.