TO MEET EXCESS DEMAND, COMMIT RESOURCES.  Administrators at Historiann's university grasp, dimly, the connection between the promiscuous mailing of thin envelopes from the likes of Harvard and the value of offering academic programs more like Harvard and less like a sub-prime party school.

This year, apparently one administrator has decided that we need to be more like prestigious, well-funded Ivies and elite SLACs.  Of course, it would cost millions if not billions of dollars to accomplish this honestly, but that’s not on the table. 

Administrators there lack the imagination of Burlington's Ralph Budd, meeting the challenge of reliable private automobiles with the Zephyrs, or Bilty and Nystrom on the Milwaukee Road recognizing the limitations of a fixed formation train and responding with the Hiawatha.  They're not even as adaptive as the management of the Chicago and North Western, getting a faster train between Chicago and the Twin Cities using existing rolling stock before the streamliners are delivered.

Historiann has an apposite characterization of what headquarters is doing: excellence without money.  But it's not borrowing a page from the Chicago and North Western playbook and lifting the standards for the existing offerings.  No, the secret to making her university, which I understand to be just below mid-majordom in sports, competitive with the land grants and the Ivies is ... to change from a standard three-credit course format to a standard four-credit course format.

I don't have to make stuff up about academic administrators.  They act normally and I report it.