You're right about the 2/3 institutions part. You could add a 4th if you include administration and fundraising.

I'm a tenured faculty member at one of the institutions discussed in the article, currently looking elsewhere for jobs. If I don't find an academic one, I'll probably leave and go into non-academic fields.

I have mixed feelings about the article, because I think the takeaway message is about right, and well-meaning, but there's a subtext that's completely problematic and lost, which is this:

The whole discussion in the article is about profit, and the loss of public [midwestern] university profits to other institutions. That is, the problem identified is in retention of profitable faculty: "midwestern universities are losing their most profitable faculty because they can't afford their salaries." Quality of research is equated with profit, grant dollars brought in, and so forth.

Why is this a problem? A number of reasons.

First and foremost, the cost and profit research brings in is not the same as quality. There's a number of studies showing that impact (itself a poor measure of quality, although sufficient) is only weakly related to grant funding. Lots of good research can be done on a minimal, if no budget, and assuming that grant dollars = research quality is wrong. It might be true for certain fields, where equipment costs, etc. are standard, but for other fields, like math, you don't need a huge budget.

The second problem is that by defining research quality in terms of profitability, you're feeding the problems that caused the hollowing out of midwestern public universities to begin with. The problem is not actually decreased public funding of universities, the problem is in the devaluing of research as a public benefit. The defunding is a secondary consequence of the devaluing, not the problem itself. Crippling tenure in Wisconsin, and threatening it in Iowa, are other consequences of this devaluing.

These discussions strike me as sort of stupid at some level, because those grants that are being brought in are federal grants, which means they are public. So what's really happening is that the states are saying "we don't want to support faculty doing research. If they can get money another way, let them."

If you want to fund research, there's basically four ways to do it:

A consumer can support a company or other institution directly, by purchasing goods or donating, or paying tuition, or whatever, which then funds research as part of its operations.

A consumer can support the researcher directly through kickstarter-like mechanisms or directly to the researcher (rare today but happens).

A citizen can provide taxes to the state which funds the researcher's salary, either at the university, or in another institution. This means the state is supporting the research.

A citizen can provide taxes to the federal government, which funds the researcher's salary. This means the federal government is supporting the research.

What's happened today is that the third option is being gutted. What we've done is essentially say that "research isn't valuable unless the researcher gets federal funds to do so, or is paid for by a private corporation."

I'm a very highly cited researcher, by many metrics, but I don't bring in much grant money by the nature of my research. So by the university's metrics I'm not valuable. Maybe that's reasonable, but to me I increasingly feel like something's hollow in these discussions.

I see administrators being quoted in this article and feel resentment, because I don't see them saying "see here, you need to give us money to support this wonderful research." What I see them saying is "see here, you need to give us money to pay the people who are bringing in money from elsewhere." What this does is feed the underlying problematic value assertion, which is that the research means nothing, it's the money. "We need money so we can make more money" is what they're actually saying.