Same as always: “Couldn’t see that coming.” If you wonder why US higher ed is so off the rails, well, it’s run by the kind of people who barrel headfirst into this kind of stuff. Who could have imagined that a country full of people losing their shit with spring isolation would say f*ck it come summer? Or that Trump’s shambolic non-policies would lead to rampant infection? Or that a planless GOP that’s epipen-level allergic to social welfare would would need to push to ‘reopen’ everything? JFC, you could’ve written this script in February — I did write big parts of it — and yet here we are: just weeks before semesters start, schools are doing sudden U-turns. The sad truth, which is nowhere mentioned except behind very closed doors, is that universities desperately needed the revenues for the coming academic year and ‘optimistically’ waited until the last minute to confront obvious realities — that is, they waited until students were up to their ears in financial and logistical commitments, at the heart of which lies financial aid. In effect, schools have offloaded their cash-flow crises onto students. I get it: I get why, I get how. But I also get that students and faculty should come first, because they are the core mission. Not real estate, not services, not endowments, not anything else. So the next time you hear an edu admin use the word “strategic,” tell them to seriously f*\ck off. Unless they’re admins at MIT, which got the strategy right earlier than anyone else. 🤯