I’m kind of depressed after spending time at this conference and talking to colleagues from many different colleges in the US and Canada. Everybody has horror stories about language programs being shut down, tenure lines eliminated, colleagues pushed into early retirement or outright fired. People have to teach courses they aren’t remotely qualified to teach (like me and my Molière course that starts on Monday).
The colleagues are all wonderful people, and they are trying to put a brave face on it but it’s all so sad. We all came to thriving programs and are witnessing their agony and demise. We had a great thing going with truly the best higher education system on the planet, and we’ve pissed it all away. Yippee for bloody us.
Clarissa's Blog 
This related thing crossed my newsfeed today:
https://hechingerreport.org/colleges-are-now-closing-at-a-pace-of-one-a-week-what-happens-to-the-students/
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It’s an absolute mystery why people would go to these tiny expensive no-name places when they can go to a large state school for 1/10 of the cost. Or for free, if they are in Illinois.
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Dunno. My sister (only one in our family to finish master’s degree) went to an itty bitty Catholic college out in the hinterlands. It was not super expensive back then (it is now!). There were like twelve people in her graduating class. It was absolutely no hindrance at all for getting into a reputable grad school, and had the interesting side-effect of bestowing on her very useful connections after grad school, which she leveraged to relocate and get better jobs. The thing about small schools is that the experience is intense, you know everybody, and if you’re not a putz, you graduate with an instant network of people who will vouch for you later– sometimes even if you didn’t go to the school at the same time as them.
That wasn’t why she went there. I’m pretty sure she was just trying to get as far away from our dull hometown as humanly possible, and someone offered her a work/study scholarship.
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“colleagues are all wonderful people”
So you say…. yet how many of them were cheering on the end of the nation state (without which no good public higher education) and implementation of ‘anti-racist’ measures used to dismantle programs?
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Totally. That’s why I say that we pissed it away. We have only ourselves to blame. And even now most people aren’t seeing how they contributed to all this.
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The balconies on the colourful buildings that line the square display numbers dating back to the time when it was used as a bullring.
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Absolutely!
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