Funding higher education

Bruno Mascarenhas has a very interesting post on funding doctor's education in India. It indicates that eventhough medical education is expensive, most of the money comes from treating patients. This suggests that perhaps many technical institutes can become essentially self funding. In Australia, technical institutes like TAFEs are funded by the government and seem to make very little money on their own. Even small pcb-cutting guillotines are imported and cost about 1500 Aus. dollars. It seems that many such instruments can be easily made in TAFEs giving training to students and at the same tome saving money and delays to small business people and offices.
At a more basic research level, scidev.net has given this example from south Africa :
"South Africa's best university-industry research networks support industry while maintaining their academic integrity. Other countries can learn from their experience, says Glenda Kruss."