Like the rest of the economy, higher education is suffering the effects of this recession. This article shows year-to-year changes in higher education budgets over the last forty years, a cycle that can be fairly called a roller coaster. In separate work, the authors modeled the shape of this cycle and found that budget analyst Harold Hovey's conclusion--that higher education both suffers from and gains disproportionately as the economy rises and falls--is strongly supported by the data. So higher education is disproportionately affected by economic cycles. But was it always this way? No. Based on data that the authors have collected on state appropriations from the 1950s to the present, they find that in the past, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s, higher education wasn't cut much more or less than other budget categories were. To prepare for that volatility, the best institutional policies would reflect the unfortunate reality that the good times won't last. When this recession ends, campuses should not restore funding to every program that has been cut. Instead, they should begin preparing for the next downturn, since, if there has been a single lesson coming out of the last two years, it is that they have not defeated the business cycle. (Contains 2 figures and 4 resources.)