Dozens of public universities that never fully recovered from the Great Recession now find themselves at the mercy of budget cuts driven by a pandemic that’s exploited their state’s biggest industries. Many states managed to avoid a financial cave-in of their fiscal 2021 budgets, owing in large part to money doled out by Congress meant to shore local economies battered by Covid-19. But those that largely depend on revenue from hard-hit industries like tourism and fossil fuels face significant uncertainty even with the new influx of federal cash.
