[necavi]

I believe that the reason that many government sites have gone dark is because most of them have a large amount of dynamic content that relies on some amount of human oversight which cannot be provided currently. Switching to a static page is much easier and cheaper than providing warnings/removing links to content that will not work during the shutdown.

[mikey_p]

Yeah, some have gone that route: http://www.ed.gov. Just put up a notice and leave everything accessible.

Others aren't redirecting, but are unavailable: http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds