SHORTER RESPONSE TO MAYOR DALEY. The dean at Anonymous Community notices Hizzoner da Younger's suggestion to shorten times to completion.

For example, twenty years ago, tuition/room/board at my alma mater was $20,000 a year. Now it's almost $50,000 a year. How do we explain this rapid increase? Clearly, the shift from “four years to graduate” to “four years to graduate” is to blame.

I think that's the price tab at Snooty Liberal Arts College, and there are a number of possible explanations, including a propensity to indulge in perfect price discrimination (does anybody really pay list price?), a reluctance for such institutions to draw down their endowments, or a flight to quality that the mayor's proposal will only intensify. Adjusted for real purchasing power, the price change is relatively small.

Silly us. We've been spending all this time and energy trying to explain variables by looking at things that vary – you know, like declining levels of public support for public colleges, or increased costs for health insurance and HVAC, or the need to keep up with current technology in the fields we teach. You've taken the opposite tack – explain drastic change by looking at things that haven't changed at all. It's almost Zen in its simplicity.

I'll tell you what. Why don't you drop by and explain to my faculty senate just exactly which courses are unnecessary? Surely, a man of your high office wouldn't pop off like that without knowing specifics. Just off the top of my head, take English. Most of our students are already fluent! Obviously, this is dreadful waste. Besides, who really needs communication skills? After all, it's not like we have a service economy or any such thing.

Syntax? The Mayor of Chicago has told the mangle-a-syl-abal joke on himself almost as often as the President of the United States has.