Universities across the US are in an overinflated bubble right now, and when it bursts, it is going to be “ugly on a stick”. So I would strongly suggest that Republicans trying to get a handle on it be extra careful in guiding the collapse.
They need to tailor the cuts to start with frivolous degrees, then move to frivolous courses; while at the same time strongly slashing bloated administrations and ridiculous pensions.
Walker had great success against the government service unions, but the academic situation is much, much worse, and at a far larger scale.
The growth in staff in higher education has been in administrators - and that’s where we need to cut. In particular we need to remove the reason to have said administrators - namely government regulations. No more dean’s of diversity. No more title ix. No reason to hire an administrator because no funding is dependent on a filing or report. Dump all departments that have “studies” in their names while you are at it. That would be a good start. End government subsidies (pell grants) and allow college loans to be terminated in bankruptcy and we’ll get this under control. BTW, a corollary to the allowance of bankruptcy would be to bring market forces to bear on college loans - as such the price would increase (account for risk of bankruptcy) and demand for said loans would decrease. This would further encourage higher ed to get efficient in how it delivers product. I suspect we’d see fewer bowling lanes on campus and more e-learning.