THE CHUTZPAH IS BREATHTAKING.

It is the nature of rent-seekers to seek rents, and a national emergency is as good a reason as any to do so.  Think about the transportation bill in 2005 that midwived the Tea Party, yes, those people got more vigorous in the 2008 and 2009 financial bailouts and stimulus bills, and the unedifying wrangling over the spring relief bill Our Political Masters are crafting is just Business as Usual, even if the contagion is not.

Thus it ought come as no surprise that Matt "Dean Dad" Reed puts in a case for the state universities.

This isn’t a panacea; states have been disinvesting from public higher ed for a long time. But going from a slow decline to a dead stop would be catastrophic for many colleges, and once that capacity is gone, getting it back is much more time-consuming and expensive.

Yes, we need to look at different ways of doing business. But to do that, we first have to survive.

It's in his interest to make that argument, and it's in the interest of Inside Higher Ed readers to post generally concurring comments and blame stingy state legislatures.

Perhaps, though, those "different ways of doing business" might come from the state universities themselves.  For the past thirty years, they've offered a simulacrum of the craziness emanating from the Browns and Oberlins, probably more for the benefit of serial administrators who hope, for instance, to parlay a directorship of affirmative action at a directional state into a gig at an Ivy.  Foucault, with genderfluid potties, never mind whether there's any learning going on.  Let the people who run the regional comprehensives and the mid-majors consider whether doubling down on access is really the best strategy, when the students and faculty are in on the non-aggression pact that characterizes the subprime party school.  (Those clueless spring breakers who made the national news might have clarified more minds about what often goes on in "college" these days, all that talk of mission, vision, values, social responsibility, ad infinitum, ad nauseum notwithstanding.)  I take no joy in pointing out that excellence has long taken a back seat to inclusion, access, all the rest.  I take no joy in noting that perhaps it takes a new virus to concentrate minds.  I will take no pleasure when the state legislatures start asking questions about the necessity of, oh, campuses in Macomb and Edwardsville and Carbondale and Charleston, let alone of Eau Claire, Menomonie, Stevens Point and River Falls.  It will come to this, though, because the impunity with which the people running state higher education have been sticking their fingers in the eyes of the very people who they seek to tax, namely those individuals who don't belong to any of the protected classes and thus must be privilege shamed.