Lots and lots of room to cut back.
Actually, much to my dislike, if they began to cut, the cutters would most likely hit areas that don't draw students--philosophy, religion, anthropology, languages, history, some of the arts, some of the sciences. And they would do so on the principle using business model of universities. Customers should get what they want, because they pay the bills. The ones that are overenrolled are the preprofessional stuff and the social sciences--psych, sociology, political science. At least in the places I know about.
I've watched several administrators bravely save threatened faculty lines in departments that I consider essential for a decent liberal arts university but, in doing so, run up against trustees who used that business model to make it hard.
The mild depression comment is surprising. You've certainly not shown that here. A bit hyper at times.
I'm finding retirement has distinctly odd rhythms to it and I'm still trying to figure them out. The essential negative one that everyone who retires from structured places talks about, that the external mandates are gone. That one for sure. And it bothers classic procastinators like me more than others. But, the opposite of that is the cliche which Mike (uw) first offered me, you get so busy you wonder how you ever had time for a job.
But then days like today come up. Before I retired, Saturday and Sunday were work days, preparations for the next week. However, today was a beautiful day here in northern Jersey so, on a whim, we drove up to Nyack in Rockland County in southern New York right on the Hudson. Wandered the town, wound up in the perfect old bookstore, with dusty old volumes, aging paperbacks, stacked on one another, cluttering the floor, no room to sit, and the owner and a customer gossiping about C. Wright Mills who used to live just up the road. I started looking for a book on Gustav Mahler by Jonathan Carr, found a rather large nest of shelves with books piled every which way. The point was to just see what was there. Fun. But then I asked the owner if he had that book. No, he says. How could he have possibly known that book and whether that book was in the random piles on the shelves and the floor. But he did.
Whooops, got carried away. Just watched the Yankees and Red Sox in a genuine brawl that the Yankees won 4 to 3; and am now watching the Cubs and Marlins. Cubs ahead 8 to 3 in the 9th. |
