I wish universities were better equipped for what you pay. Where is all that money going anyways? Leaking like free electrons?
Overwhelmingly, most education fund use goes to salary, benefits and student aid (~$2 billion, 81%).
Interestingly the amount of money raised by tuition and fees almost exactly matches the amount spent on salaries, benefits and student aid. So one way of viewing it is that things like lab equipment are basically funded by grants, gifts, and state appropriations.
I assume this would be similar at Wisconsin in the late 90s, I doubt universities have changed much.
Maybe research budgets offer more flexibility and better equipment but I doubt the undergrads get to touch that stuff.
Source: budgetandfinance.psu.edu
No. What amount (if any) is being pocketed is not apparent from such data. Perhaps contrary to your expectation, it's basically impossible to pocket money allocated for salaries (people would complain they don't get what they're owed). It's much easier to pocket equipment. In any case, the referenced data is quite independent of that.
Instead, it shows that the universities do not allocate money on equipment (because that's what grants are for). Of course, spending grant money on lab equipment for undergrads directly competes with equipment for research, which puts a group at a competitive disadvantage in their field of research.