RETHINKING ACCESS. Financial Aid Office reports the California public colleges have discovered they might not be able to serve everybody they'd like to admit given the resources they don't have. (That provokes a rant: yesterday the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences pulled the old close-the-Washington-Monument trick, responding to a criticism of administrative expenses that has been circulating in the state by showing three job descriptions, for advisors and research personnel serving students, whose salaries are classified as administrative, and further observing that the College did about half the teaching with about 25% of the University's administrative expenses. That still leaves a lot of assessors of the obvious, counselors of the unprepared, diversity boondogglers, form fiddlers -- the paperwork for an external speaker exceeds that for a carload of corn to be milled in transit -- and vice presidents to go after. Are you listening, California?) Perhaps the fiscal follies in the states (it is not a crisis to spend money as if the capital gains taxes on stock bought at 150x earnings and sold at 200x earnings would go on forever, it is folly) will provoke an examination of the government schools, so that money will not be misspent on not teaching students things in kindergarten that the government colleges grapple with teaching later.