The online version of today’s Chronicle features an article about the $825-billion stimulus package and the money that colleges hope to get from it for renovation, improvements, and energy-efficiency projects.

It seems that a number of college leaders are talking directly to their communities about how desperately their colleges need that money. Some people in those communities aren’t taking it well.

In an op-ed in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Robert H. Bruininks, the president of the University of Minnesota, tells Minnesotans that they should support the stimulus bill because it will bring jobs and much-needed repairs to the university. The need for the money is even greater in the Minnesota State Colleges & Universities system, known as MnSCU.

“To understand the pent-up demand for maintenance and renewal,” Mr. Bruininks writes, “consider that MnSCU maintains more than 292 acres of rooftops over its classrooms and academic buildings, and that the state’s bonding bill last year was only able to meet half of the system’s maintenance and renewal needs.”

Certainly, the money from the stimulus bill that would go toward energy-efficiency projects seems like an unambiguously good thing. But many colleges hope the stimulus money will help with their deferred-maintenance problems — problems that have been growing, even as those institutions continue building.

This fact is not lost on readers of Mr. Bruininks’s essay. One reader responded with this: “Lets remember who is getting $175-million from Minnesota taxpayers, and decided to use it to build a football stadium instead of using it for all of those needed improvements. That was you, wasn’t it?” (Elsewhere in the current Star Tribune you can find a story about the University of Minnesota’s plan to build a new basketball facility.)

Another reader’s comment, which has apparently been deleted from the newspaper’s site, said: “You’d think, with all the educated people they are producing, ONE of them could figure out how to cut down on infrastructure costs. If you don’t have the economics of keeping costs manageable after all these decades, what makes you think more money will fix your lack of planning?”

Kansans, who certainly have a reputation for being more conservative than Minnesotans, might be asking the same thing. In a press release, the Kansas Board of Regents said that it was asking the state’s Congressional delegation to support the maintenance money in the stimulus bill.

“The six state universities currently face a maintenance backlog of $825-million,” the release says. “In addition, the state’s municipal university, 19 community colleges, and 6 technical colleges currently face a maintenance backlog of at least $172-million. Working closely with the state’s public higher-education institutions, the board recently compiled a list of potential ‘shovel-ready’ infrastructure projects that could begin almost immediately. The board was able to identify $364.1-million in state university projects, and $75.6-million in projects on the campuses of the municipal university, 19 community colleges, and 6 technical colleges, for a system-wide total of $439.7-million. According to a recent study, these projects, if completely addressed, would create 8,354 new jobs in Kansas.”

Is this starting to feel like a facilities-oriented bailout?