When John B. Simpson, president of the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo, compares the campus over which he presides to its public-university peers, the contrast can be unflattering. Buildings and laboratories need upgrading. Richer, more prestigious institutions have a leg up in attracting renowned scholars and big-ticket federal grants. The surrounding environs in upstate New York are economically depressed. So President Simpson has been arguing for more public support and the ability to regularly raise tuition. As the current recession erodes endowments and state revenues, other college and university presidents can be expected to share Simpson's situation. Unfortunately, says the writer, as the SUNY system lurches toward financial crisis, it has squandered the opportunity to make its case to taxpayers and elected representatives, by demonstrating its success in doing what the majority of those people care most about: helping students learn. By refusing to provide public, comparable measures of student-learning results, New York's public-university system has sown the seeds of long-term marginalization. It is time, contends the author, for higher education to step up to the opportunity to prove how valuable its services are in a time when learning matters more than ever before. If even half of what is said about the excellence of higher-education system is true, higher education has a powerful case to make for increased public support, for more investment in times of economic peril, not less.