Universities are also the place that turn out STEM graduates and Ph.Ds: engineers (the non-software kind, where you actually need and use the education), physicians, scientists and researchers of all flavors (like the kind trying to find a cure for COVID-19), and so forth. These people are the pillars of progress and innovation necessary for a country to be great. Ironically, by defunding universities, culture warrior conservatives are effectively slitting their own country's throat.

(Personally, I had no use for the ideologues either but managed to avoid them by simply not taking any of their classes; foreign language courses are a great way of filling humanities requirements with something actually useful.)