It's a way for Universities to talk to _each_other_ at higher speeds without having to pay for the *ahem* value "added" by the Internet. Higher-Ed
Would this be such a Bad Thing(tm)? Many times I have seen research professors and students in the research field getting extremely upset because data that they used to exchange with other schools and countries is now taking 20 times longer because Joe Blow from L.A. is checking out all his favorite sports stories 300 times a day and John Dough is downloading all the porn he can fit on his 5 gig drive from across the country. I wouldn't really see this move as a "Internet Separatist" movement, more as a "return to normalcy" in the true spirit of the Internet. Consider if you were a biochemical research student at biochem.edu and you wanted to transfer a 30Meg molecular model back and forth between biochem.edu and chem.edu but in between both of you were hundreds and thousands of hosts, using Internet resources for commercial and entertainment purposes. Wouldn't you be a little upset when your ftp was finished at .098K/s over a multi-homed DS3? Ben