When Gov. Jim Doyle delivered his State of the State address Wednesday evening, he dedicated a relatively small modicum of time to higher education and the University of Wisconsin System. But the most revealing part of his speech was the portion he left out.

Advance copies of the address distributed to the press included one sentence in the gut of the UW portion that stood alone as its own paragraph, “For the first time in more than 10 years, the budget I will submit to you next month will add more state money to the UW and financial aid than to the corrections budget.” Yet when it came time to utter these words, the governor whispered into an aide’s ear and allowed the teleprompter to reset while the audience applauded a previous comment.

One would hope Doyle omitted this portion because he didn’t enjoy the subtle admission that all his previous budgets granted priority to prisoners over students. And sinister as it may be, this option actually stands as preferable to the comment the governor’s office gave this newspaper the next morning: “It is something that we’d like to be able to use as a principle … but we had to wait for the revenue numbers to come in.” In other words, Doyle isn’t sure if the UW can beat out the prison system next month.

Regardless of the final budget, that one sentence left hanging on the teleprompter Wednesday evening spoke more about Doyle’s record on higher education than any of the phrases he did lend his voice to. Any record that funds yesterday’s criminals over tomorrow’s leaders is one that the governor ought to be ashamed of.

So we will be watching when Doyle’s budget comes out next month. We hope that the governor will see the school at the other end of the lake, but history tells us that he probably has his eyes set on the prison just up the road.