Rural types have long resented university being a source of kids who stop coming home for Christmas,

To them it’s less about the irony of taking funding while denying others and more about paranoia that affordable higher education will see rural American “culture” (read, child marriage, rape culture, and grievance culture over being judged when they say the N-Word) be wiped out in an instant as everyone takes the free ride and never comes back.

Then they might have to do something like be accommodating to the immigrant communities that actually want those rural jobs!