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<p>This will never happen. Lake Superior State, yes, Northern no. There’s almost no overlap in curriculum between Michigan Tech, which is close to 100% a STEM school, and Northern which is a teacher training, nursing, med tech, and liberal arts school. If you closed Northern, some kids in the western UP would need to travel 470+ miles to the nearest public university in Michigan that provides the kind of curriculum that Northern offers (that would be Central). In addition to which, you’d rip the economic heart out of the largest town in the UP, a chronically economically depressed area. At that point I think there would be overwhelming sentiment in the UP to secede from Michigan and re-join Wisconsin. </p>
<p>But no governor is ever going to let that happen. The UP’s population may be a small percentage of Michigan’s total population, but it’s a volatile population that could easily tip a close statewide election.</p>
<p>And as best I can tell, Northern isn’t suffering the kinds of enrollment declines faced by Central and Eastern.</p>