Scholars and policy analysts have long focused their attention on questions related to funding for higher education. Considerations include questions about the relationship between educational spending and student success and efforts to determine overall levels of funding adequacy. This report builds on those conversations by drawing attention to the relationship between variation in the share of educational expenditures that are covered by tuition, student retention and completion, and institutional inequality, which is understand both financially (meaning differences in levels and sources of income) and socially (meaning differences in status, as measured by admission selectivity) (Taylor & Cantwell, 2019). To do this, this report uses federal data to develop a novel measure termed Student Share Difference, or SSD. The authors find that SSD is a useful tool for assessing institutional inequality within a state that directly impacts students. As such, the measure of intrinsically interesting for scholars focused on higher education policy, finance, and outcomes. Further, SSD may be useful for policymakers. SSD compares an institution to its public peers within a state rather than to past levels of funding or institutions in other states. This changes the kinds of implications that can be drawn from the analyses. Rather than recommending that states return to past levels of funding, the analyses suggest ways in which states could spread existing resources and obligations throughout a public higher education system. Reducing institutional financial inequality (as measured by SSD) may help some states to improve student success by identifying the kinds of institutions at which additional funds are most likely to produce results. Based on the findings from this report, the authors believe that SSD may be a promising metric for further scholarly and policy-focused investigation. Accordingly, the report concludes by offering implications for state policymakers and outlining additional ways in which SSD could be used to study state higher education policy.