COLUMBIA, Mo. — A tide of anger has been swelling here since May after the new University of Missouri president, Timothy M. Wolfe, disclosed plans to close the university’s publishing house, stoking arguments over the institution’s priorities and fueling an escalating national debate over the necessity of university presses and their future in the digital world.

Over more than five decades, Missouri’s press has printed prized academic titles including “The Collected Works of Langston Hughes,” “The Complete Sermons of Ralph Waldo Emerson” and “Mark Twain and His Circle.” Word that it was shutting down after losing its $400,000 annual subsidy drew outrage from professors, students, authors and alumni, and from the sons of President Dwight D. Eisenhower and of the black historian John Hope Franklin. A news release that the university circulated this week announcing plans for a new publishing operation seemed only to intensify the venom.

“As I try to read this, I toggle back and forth between nausea and migraine,” Andy Fristoe, who described himself as a friend of a Missouri Press author, posted on a Facebook page, Save the University of Missouri Press.

Such disagreements are playing out on campuses around the country, as tightening budgets have complicated efforts by university presses to keep up with the changing publishing marketplace.