If your choice is between fixing the roof and feeding your family, you put buckets under the drips when it rains. That's what Oregon State University and the other state universities have been doing for more than 10 years. This biennium, they'd hoped that the state's more prosperous revenue situation would allow them to make some long-delayed repairs to both buildings and programs.

It doesn't look like it.

There's a yawning gap between what the State Board of Higher Education asked for, what Gov. Ted Kulonsoski put in his budget and what the co-chairs of the legislature's joint ways and means committee seem inclined to approve. There's a $271.8 million difference, for example, between the $324 million that the governor recommended to fix roofs, foundations and antiquated electrical systems and the $53 million that the co-chairs are inclined to approve.

Those two influential co-chairs - Sen. Kurt Schrader, a Democrat from Canby and Rep. Mary Dolan, a Portland Democrat, will be at Cheldelin Middle School at 6:30 p.m. tonight as part of their seven-city bus tour. They can expect to get an earful from the public and perhaps some OSU employees about what life has been like at a university in a state that ranks 46th in nation for its investment in higher education.

In real terms, that means the state used to provide $5,388 per OSU student in 2001 - hardly a time of fiscal largesse for those who remember. Yet that situation only has worsened. The state's investment last year per OSU student was $4,681.

At the same time, OSU has more than stepped up to the plate to make the most of what funds have been given. Locally, the Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute partnership between OSU and Hewlett-Packard Co. has returned seven-fold on investments and new technologies.

We're talking about growing jobs, which is what the statewide OSU Extension Service and the research and experiment stations do very well. Places such as the Food Innovation Center in Portland provide the expertise to entrepreneurs who launch Oregon commodities on the world market. For instance, they help Oregon wheat farmers grow the right breed of soft white wheat to produce the perfect noodle to appeal to lucrative markets in Asia.

Of course, you'd expect the newspaper that serves the city that OSU calls home to be high on its achievements; we see them firsthand, and we benefit from the jobs created here.

However, our support is based not in boosterism but in solid economics. Anyone who cares to can see that OSU has solidly returned on the dollars. Now it's time to put another economic principle to work: You need to wisely invest money to make money. The state has that opportunity now. We don't expect our legislators to approve everything on higher education's needs list. But if we cannot fix the roof, pay the workers and invest in the programs that bring in money and students, then we're not exercising prudent financial management; we're guilty of neglect.