The first thing that comes to mind is the thousands of students who enroll there, many of whom are local and ideally will stay in the area upon graduation. Not to mention the blow to local economies.
I'm not sure the world will miss MVSU playing basketball, but the region and State would absolutely miss the teachers, accountants, social workers, law enforcement officers, construction managers, artists and on and on who graduate from there.
I get it would not be great for the local economies. But All of those schools are within 2 hours if not closer from a better situated university. And there are of course community colleges even closer. I'm sure there are some students that the difference between having a 4 year university in their back yard versus having to commute or move for their last two years of school would be the difference between them getting a four year degree or not, but those areas aren't that populated to begin with. Just by math it can't be that many students that would actually not get a degree if they weren't there, so there wouldn't be many teachers, accountants, social workers, LEO, etc.
I would assume that DSU, Alcorn, and MVSU do have a greater percentage of their graduates stay in the area, but my guess that would be more a reflection of them getting students that choose the school largely because they are uncomfortable going far, not so much that they are actually increasing the number of students that would stay in state by attracting them to one of those schools instead of MSU, UM, USM, or JSU.
At the very least, we don't need MVSU and DSU. We'd probably be better off letting MDCC take over Valley's campus and try to transition students that would have gone to Valley to JSU if the HBCU aspect is what attracts them or DSU if they just like the proximity.
