Colleges and Universities are facing budget problems in the current and beginning to grow age of fiscal discipline after decades of profligate spending on one great idea after another and rampant hiring of school staff and management squads having little to nothing to do with academics. In their Wall Street Journal piece, Sara Randazzo and Heather Gillers distilled the problem to its essence:

As schools scramble to make cutbacks, they face broader questions about what kind of university they can be in this new era of financial constraint.

Here’s an idea. Work with me on this, it’s a-borning: how about these institutions turn their focus onto teaching and away from publishing and from pushing the latest politically correct claptrap, the latter which these days is illustrated by DEI bigotries and one-sided sexual offensivenesses “investigations?”

Get rid of all that non-academics-related staff bloat, freeze the gussying up of their labs with froo-froo that serves only to enhance academic shower appearances, take away the publish or perish foolishness that produces little more than word salads with science jargon dressings, reduce the rate of jobs-for-life awards, and stop fancying up student housing with stuff that does nothing to enhance studying and socializing.