Wisconsin is no exception, losing scores of banks over the last decade. Some of those acquisitions or mergers make financial sense and help to protect consumer and corporate assets. Others can leave a hole in the fabric of a community where there are fewer choices about where to go for financing.

Jelena McWilliams, chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., spoke to that point earlier this year in Milwaukee, where she noted that about 600 U.S. counties now have only one bank.

“When that bank closes down, so does the barbershop and the diner and the hardware store, and the revenue stream from the community goes away,” McWilliams said. “You lose. Every community loses when they lose a bank.”

Another factor is the role of higher education as an economic driver. Some scholars have suggested that public land-grant universities have done more to aggravate rural out-migration than to prevent it, which means that UW-Madison and the rest of the UW System must be challenged to think creatively about what makes for a prosperous, diverse rural economy.