One positive effect of this will be the discontinuation of over recruiting by grad programs for the exploitation of cheap labor while producing more PhDs than there are jobs for.

When I was in grad school, the fall back if you left academia was to go into industry, which seemed to have an endless need for PhDs willing to make the jump. Not any more. Even industry is saturated and with so much talent floating around, the biotech/pharma job markets have been an absolute bloodbath.

A few years from now, when a new equilibrium is reached (hopefully...), a secondary positive effect might be universities creating more stable, better paid permanent positions like staff scientists or senior scientists or, with any luck, more research track professorships to pick up the research slack while dealing with the decrease in exploitable workers.

I'm sure none of this was even considered by the idiots making these changes, but it's a potentially positive outcome in a s*&^ situation.