State-sponsored, tax-advantaged college savings programs (prepaid tuition plans, college savings trusts, and college savings bonds) have proliferated since 1994. This study, which examined 160 documents from 44 states, focuses on their effect on policy, and on the debate over public-versus-private responsibility to pay for higher education, as well as the corollary issues of access and equity. Plans were found to range in a continuum from greater public responsibility to greater private responsibility, with recent state actions leaning towards the private end. Rhetorical analysis, which focused on what states said they were doing, revealed three major themes of public discourse surrounding the adoption, implementation, and promotion of state-sponsored tax-advantaged plans: the economic value of higher education; state duty to provide educational opportunity and encourage/assist citizen participation; and student debt reduction and anti-generational burden shifting. Content analysis of state programs, which focused on what states were actually doing, concentrated on factors most relevant to the public-versus-private issue: program type; guarantees; state contribution; tax treatment; and state financial aid. This analysis confirms the position that parents should bear most of the burden; state rhetoric offers the same conclusion. A taxonomy of state programs is appended. (Contains 59 references.) (RH)