A group of WSU faculty is complaining about the current university president, saying that he needs to bring in more money. They want a new admin that will:
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Will implement effective strategies that bolster the academic and research excellence of WSU, along with its associated reputation and ranking.
Understands the key factors that influence enrollment and invests sufficiently in recruitment efforts to increase it.
Prioritizes investment in academic programs, increasing rather than incessantly decreasing the financial support provided.
Implements meticulous stewardship of university resources.
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The admin responds:
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The issues raised by this small group of faculty in their current news release are essentially the same as the concerns they raised last year. The challenges WSU is dealing with are issues that colleges and universities are facing across the country. These are not new problems and WSU has been taking concrete steps to address them for the last several years.”
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I hate to agree with school admins, but in this specific case the admin is right. All colleges are losing students for the same fucking reason: college is not worth the money or time. The loss is accelerating now that EMPLOYERS have recognized the same problem and started removing degree requirements for jobs.
Most colleges were only useful to train aristocrats in the ways of aristocracy. Land-grant schools (including WSU) were truly useful for a long time because they focused firmly on SKILLS NEEDED FOR LIFE AND JOBS. After WW2 the Deepstate push for employer requirement, research to serve Deepstate, and total indoctrination spoiled the land-grant schools, made them no better than Harvard.
Good old Parkinson amplified the problem in the last 30 years. Federal funds for research and student loans flooded in, and admins grew exponentially and Parkinsonly to absorb the flood without USING any of it for real training.
The same thing happened to business at the same time. Before the Share Value era corporations relied on customers for their survival, so they had to please customers. Corporations that tried to please shareholders first (like Studebaker) went bankrupt. After 1980 the flow of free cash from VCs and governments freed corporations from customers and freed colleges from students, so both simply grew to satisfy their own power-loving evil tastes. Corporations got rid of production and workers. Colleges got rid of training and faculty. The whole structure served the CEO and a few other top execs, and ruined everyone else.
Enrich the rich, ruin the poor.
Now, thanks solely to Jerome Powell, the gradient has been reversed.
Polistra's Mill 