This article brings attention to decision-making in the world of state financing for higher education. It reflects on the origin of this field and the system builders in the 1960s and 1970s, who needed to figure out rational ways to both justify funding requests to the state and distribute resources among institutions. The article highlights one such funding request from the author's personal archive of budget memos--the "Mouse-Equivalent Unit" (MEU) proposal. The article asserts that, had the MEU been adopted, it would have been a full-service formula and would have rationalized allocations from the state to the university, within the university, and to the auditor. Appended is the June 22, 1970 internal memorandum proposing the MEU to the University Architect, VP for Finance from the Principal Architect.