NAS On Higher-Ed Bailouts

I'm against using the pandemic to advance pre-existing, non-relevant policy preferences.

   But, as usual, I'm sympathetic to NAS's suggestions (other than that thing above).

   University's seem like such a mess. Though even from the inside it's kind of hard to tell what's really going on. We have so much laughably unnecessary shit that I wouldn't even know where to start were I to try to list it. Ditto staff who do...well, I honestly have no idea. I had a friend at one of the libraries who asked for a transfer because this person had so little to do that it was intolerably boring. Eventually surfing the web just wasn't cutting it anymore...

   My own august institution seems convinced that it would be a disaster for it to get smaller. We fell 150 students short of our (ever-expanding) recruitment goal last year, and the administration flipped its ever-lovin' shit. We have some pretty unreliable and nutty administrators now--an unfortunately recent development. So it's now even harder to tell what's really going on. But that smallish shortfall already had The Powers That Be speaking in apocalyptic terms--and at universities that means: stuff like the dreaded increased teaching loads...dun dun DUUUUUUNNNN... Global pandemic and looming economic collapse? Nothing but happy-talk. Going back to our student population-size of three years ago? THE. END. OF. EVERYTHING.... 

   Since the gym's been closed, I haven't driven by the construction site for the new football stadium...wonder whether that's still going up?