Shock Doctrine is right. They have been so successful is stealing public tax dollars from K-12. Now they want to finish off our university system.

Privatized state colleges will be more expensive and will eventually be allowed to go under completely to remove competition for a decreasing student body. We'll go back to the system of "gentlemen only" higher education, the 99% having to make do with community college/vocational education that will get them educated enough to do the jobs but not educated enough to want something better.

Administrative salaries are booming, administrative staffs are growing wildly, while academic departments and programs are slashed to the bone to "save money." Students pay higher and higher tuitions to be taught by underpaid adjuncts. These instructors earn poverty wages and have no benefits, but VPs, associate VPs, and assistant VPs all collect healthy 6-figure paychecks and nice bonuses.

The students are in a lose/lose situation. The adjuncts are often working on multiple campuses to earn enough to survive, so aren't readily accessible. The adjuncts are treated like dirt by the administration, so often don't have access to information about programs and services that benefit students. Adjuncts also have no voice in university decisions.

As student debt rises, the quality of education decreases. Full-time faculty are just TOO expensive in the corporate model.

over the past couple of decades, states have dramatically dropped public university funding.

it is pretty typical then for the universities to want to raise tuition to make up their loss of budget from state funding.

then the state legislatures hear from angry parents.

then the state legislatures that have been cutting the university budgets pass laws that the universities can not raise tuition.

then the stage legislators go back to the constituents and brag about holding down tuition raises.

So now some of the universities that have a strong reputation feel like they are getting so little funding from the state and are so hemmed in by the state regulations that they would rather just drop the small amount of funding that they receive from the state and cut loose and make the difference up in tuition raises that the state legislators won't allow.

this causes a dichotomy between the more prestigious state universities who would rather just go it alone and the less prestigious but serving tons of students in the state who can't make it alone.

when the state may provide less than 10% of funding. If this continues to its logical conclusion, the result will mirror the effect of charter schools in K-12: The elites will prosper while charging tuition only the upper classes can afford (without massive student loans) while the open-admission campuses will sink ever lower into underfunded mediocrity. Equality of opportunity in education is an endangered species.