What I have never figured out is 2 things: how are the technical colleges immune to reduced fianncing (see how much of your property tax goes to MATC) and why no one ever proposes a consolildation of the UW system. I am not proposing less seats in the class room for students but reduce the numer of 2 year and 4 year locations. A lot of 4 year locations have 6k students. Being in a business that reduces expense through economies of scale seems we could get rid of a few campusses and still provice education to all that want it.
You are not thinking this through clearly. Reducing the number of campuses without reducing the number of "seats in the classroom" would result in very little savings. Let's say you consolidated the entire system outside of Madison and Milwaukee into four, 20,000 student campuses - Whitewater, Eau Claire, La Crosse and Green Bay. None of them have the infrastructure to handle that many students - you would have to build more classrooms, more dorms, etc. You would also have to hire a bunch of professors unless you want to significantly increase student/teacher ratios. And such personnel costs are the largest costs that these institutions have.
About the only cost savings you would realize is administrative salaries. But I think that would be a wash considering all the buildings you would have to build. Furthermore what are you going to do with the other campuses? It's not as though you can easilly sell off an entire college campus in the middle of Stevens Point.