Our reader sent an update on the RD situation:
My friend, I’m with you on this beyond what you can even imagine. I’m in this every day, and I’m at the end of my tether. Here’s an example.
I have a colleague, Professor T, who is retiring. Being a very responsible and meticulous person, Professor T informed the administration in July of 2025 that he was going to retire in August of 2026. More than a year in advance. He emailed everybody who might be affected by his retirement and cc-ed me. I also informed the administration that he was retiring. I put it in the budget and in the Annual Report. I signed the retirement paperwork in February. I created and posted a schedule for Fall of 2026 without Professor T who is – get that – retiring. So he won’t be teaching. Because he’s retiring.
Yesterday, yes, yesterday, my friend, April 29, 2026, an angry administrator showed up to tell me that we failed to inform them that Professor T was retiring.
“You didn’t file any of the paperwork!” he said.
Professor T and I stared in mute amazement. The secretary was the first to come to and she rolled in the ream of paperwork we all signed and submitted months ago.
“Well, we’ll have to re-sign it because there are no signatures on my copy,” said the administrator, waving a blank copy of the exact same form we showed him.
In silence, I signed his document.
I’m not burnt out because I don’t like teaching or research. No, students are great. Research is going fantastic. It’s this kind of shit that’s getting to me. Because Professor T’s situation is one of I don’t know how many ludicrous things that I have to deal with. He’s my most responsible, reliable professor who is taking early retirement because he’s tired of this absolute crap. Nobody is being hired to replace him. Just like nobody was hired to replace the other 4 professors at my department who retired since 2022.
You simply can’t make a university run on 1/3 of its workforce and expect good results. Now the general public, whom we are supposed to serve, is noticing. I’m extremely embarrassed about what your friend experienced and I confirm that this isn’t an outlier. It’s how things are because we are terribly mismanaged.
Sorry for the rant but you hit a very sore spot. Thank you for bringing it up because it’s very important and must be talked about.
Clarissa's Blog 
If only your tumble into Kafka’s world was at all unique. I don’t doubt that the Peter Principle has been implemented more assiduously in your baliwick, but the ripple effects of our K-12 Decline and Fall are ubiquitous. If there are not enough competent folks to staff our institutions, (and we’ve been there for at least the past 10 years), they no longer work.
The women, who were our best teachers, when their only other professional option was becoming a nurse, are now doctors, lawyers, architects, college professors. This started in the ’70s (my wife quit her primary school teaching job and got her law degree in ’75), and combined with the pernicious teacher’s unions, has resulted in the decline and fall of virtually every institution in America.
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