FOR DECADES, WHILE coastal cities like Seattle and Boston have swelled with high-paying innovation jobs and hordes of new arrivals, much of the Great Lakes region – once the country’s thriving industrial heart – has suffered the opposite effect, hemorrhaging both jobs and talent.

Illinois, for example, represented roughly 6.5% of the country’s gross domestic product in 1965, a figure that fell to 4.2% by 2018. Michigan, the only state to actually record a population loss in the 2010 Census, represented 5.3% of national GDP in 1965 and just 2.6% in 2018. COVID-19, with a disproportionate impact on the service industry and other lower-income work, is likely to only accelerate the trend.

Amid the country’s deepening economic crisis – and a nationwide reckoning for higher education – a new report from the Brookings Institution argues that the “often-overlooked” regional public universities of the Midwest are both highly vulnerable to funding cuts and particularly critical for local economies.

“These schools were a buffer against the last downturn, against the worst economic impact impacts of the Great Recession,” says Robert Maxim, a research associate in the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings and a coauthor of the report. But just as the institutions have helped bolster their communities, he says, now pandemic-related disinvestment or campus closures could also bring outsize negative impact – “and actually make the downturn worse.”

The report comes on the heels of devastating financial news for colleges and universities across the country: Officials in many states, forced to reckon with suddenly gaping budget holes, have already proposed deep cuts, including a $1.7 billion slash to public education in California, $493 million cut in Colorado, and $110 million drop in Ohio.

Some of the carnage has been eased by the federal CARES Act, but the financial future for higher education remains bleak: As colleges grapple with pandemic-era concessions like virtual or modified classes and dramatically reduced services, they’re also facing potentially deep enrollment declines and the loss of revenue-generators such as meal plans and event tickets. More waves of state cuts are likely.

“I’m a little worried people don’t understand quite how bad this is going to be,” Bill Lyne, a professor at Western Washington University and president of a faculty union, told The Seattle Times.

Regional publics, vaguely defined as non-flagship, four-year institutions that focus more on teaching than research – such as Cleveland State, Youngstown State and Kent State in Ohio, but not Ohio State – may suffer the worst fates. The schools are found throughout the country but are most concentrated in the Midwest, a region with a strong tradition of public education.

They’re also disproportionately important to communities of color: Overall, 62% of students in the Great Lakes region who attend a public four-year university do so at a regional institution, according to the report; among black students the figure is 71%, and among Native students nearly 75%. Some institutions, like the majority-black Chicago State University and the University of Minnesota, Morris, with a large Native American population, are particularly vital.

“Literature shows that [RPUs] are an important source of educational access for certain underrepresented groups,” the report states. “Regional public universities help close racial attendance gaps.”

They also help buoy local economies. In the aftermath of the Great Recession, small metro areas fared worse than midsize and large metro areas, but smaller communities with RPUs recovered somewhat better than those with no universities and recorded higher median incomes. Even in some struggling cities, like Flint, a regional public serves as a particularly critical anchor institution that supports not only faculty but other jobs like nearby food vendors or hair salons.

“Having a campus provides indirect employment,” says Maxim. “If a campus isn’t opening in the fall it has the opposite effect.”

But while elite private institutions and even many major flagship public universities can fall back on massive endowments, RPUs are far leaner, and don’t have much more room for tuition increases, says Maxim. “They kind of don’t have that option anymore,” he says, “and even if they did, that may lead to further backlash.”

RPUs also don’t receive federal land grant funds, and, according to experts, were underrepresented in Congress’ recent higher ed relief fund. They have been left out of the recent discussion around free community college. With many states required by their constitutions to balance their budgets, the havoc wrought by COVID-19 may make them popular targets for cuts that will ultimately prove counterproductive.

The report argues for emergency federal intervention, as well as a broader shift in national education priorities that modernizes land grant funding models and recognizes the importance of RPUs. “In the longer run,” says Maxim, “federal policymakers should be thinking about this class of universities a lot more proactively than they do now.”