MAKE HIGHER EDUCATION HIGHER AGAIN.

Maybe it's the continuing intrusion of special education, not the corona tyranny or the Diversity Weenies, that's wrecking faculty morale.  One administrator has thoughts.  "The reasons cited for the departures include burnout, low compensation, lack of remote or hybrid work options, and recent racial and political unrest—which places pressure on workplace relationships and complicates people’s sense of belonging. In addition, employees are being lured away by more competitive packages from rival colleges or organizations in other fields."  Now might not be the time to apologize for being too selective.  You won't find that in his essay, which deteriorates into a jumble of the usual buzzwords of culture studies and diversity indoctrination.  You might find some answers in working the problem.

There are plenty of reasons to worry about the future of academe. Paul Musgrave, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, captures many of them in an essay titled “The Season of Our Professorial Discontent.” He imagines a prolonged state of “Eternal Covid” in which he spends “decades delivering indifferent lectures to indifferent classes as the price of submitting little-read articles to niche journals.” If he can’t kindle the same enthusiasm in students that he brings to his teaching, Musgrave fears he will become “just a dispenser of grades.”

Indeed, the drop in student performance during the pandemic’s Zoom era has only continued after the return to in-person teaching. Faculty members often feel pressure from administrators to lower expectations for students who are struggling to meet deadlines and sometimes skipping class altogether. Earlier this year, New York University fired Maitland Jones Jr., a respected researcher and teacher, in part because students had filed a petition protesting the rigor of his organic-chemistry course. The story resonated nationally because many faculty members feel similarly trapped between disengaged students and provosts preoccupied with retention.

Eternal corona tyranny with eternal protest. Looks like a good time for academicians to think about model railroading.