<p>^ Yes, but what we may see is public universities that for all intents and purposes look more and more like private schools. More OOS and foreign students; funding increasingly from private not public sources. So a few of the flagships may eventually look more like Ivies (or like internationalized versions of Beijing University.) They’ll turn out globe-trotting public servants like John Huntsman, who will work for Ivy-educated CEO-slash-Presidents like Mitt Romney who clearly understand how these processes work.</p>
<p>I would not be surprised to see, ultimately, Vulture Capitalism applied to “directional” public institutions: schools being broken up and sold off (in some cases, even to foreign entities). </p>
<p>So more and more formerly middle class Americans won’t get liberal education for citizenship, they’ll get trade schools that spin people up for brief assignments to meet the fast-changing local & regional needs of highly efficient global firms. They’ll be permanently stateless and never own property. That way, in periods when their old skills aren’t needed, they can be moved efficiently to specialized training sites anywhere in the country.</p>