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In today’s edition:
- A modest proposal for fixing higher education
- How immigration can ease the heartland’s labor heartburn
- Dogs are humanity’s greatest creation
Administrators’ great burden
It is a melancholy object to those who walk through a college campus when they see the libraries, the quads and classroom doors crowded with whingeing students and professors, followed by three, four or six administrators importuning every passing donor for an alms.
“Happily, there is a simple solution,” Pomona College professor Gary Smith writes in his modest proposal for fixing college bureaucracies.
Smith explains that over three decades, Pomona’s number of professors fell from 180 to 175, while the number of administrators grew from 56 to 310. This trend, he proposes, must continue, “accelerated by not replacing retiring or departing professors and by offering generous incentives for voluntary departures.”
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Of course, to maintain the student-to-faculty ratio, Pomona will let in fewer and fewer first-years. Smith writes: “A notable side effect would be a boost in Pomona’s U.S. News & World Report rankings as its admissions rate approaches zero.”
After a few more rejiggers, Smith explains, higher education’s administrators will then be able to go about their righteous work “without having to deal with whiny students and grumpy professors” at all. Bliss.
Smith carefully lays out the next steps and ultimate payoffs of the proposal — and solves the coming chatbot problem while he’s at it.
The plan is not liable to the least objection and thus ought to be implemented posthaste. And if, alas, it fails or is tardy in its yield, the great many students and professors can simply be eaten.
Immigration’s big boost
America’s counties are hollowing out, and the only thing keeping them from hollowing faster is immigration. A few specifics from the Editorial Board: “Immigrants slowed demographic decline in more than 1,100 counties from 2020 to 2023. … Their numbers made up more than the entire growth of the population in 131 of them.”
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This phenomenon is yet more evidence to stop thinking of immigration as a burden and start considering it an opportunity — and the best one, at that, for saving the economies of the heartland.
The board presents the woes that attend depopulation (home prices, tax revenue and business profits invariably down) and all the wins that immigrants present. Obviously, there are challenges and costs to attracting immigrants away from America’s metropolises and toward sluggish cities in the middle, but they will be well worth it, the board writes.
In fact, not having immigrants around should be considered the real burden. As Catherine Rampell asks, do you want your grandma to never retire?
Immigrants, Catherine explains, are already doing the jobs that native-born workers won’t do because they are too difficult or can’t do because they are too difficult. Increasingly, immigrants are doing jobs that native-born workers would be happy to do … if there were just more native-born workers.
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“To put a finer point on it,” she writes, “there’s so much demand for workers now that even the most marginal American workers, such as teenagers and people with disabilities, are doing unusually well in the labor market.”
Sure, jurisdictions could loosen child-labor laws (another modest proposal!). But don’t you think there’s a simpler solution in reach that’s better for everyone?
Chaser: Spain’s baby bust left it high and dry on labor, too, Lee Hockstader writes. Then it provided a case study in how successful increased immigration could be.
Less politics
Let Tommy Tomlinson take you back 30,000 years, to early humanity and the beginnings of domestication, to the first person to say “urgh gurgh!” — translation: “good boy!” — and rub the belly of a wolf.
This, Tomlinson writes, was the world’s first dog, humankind’s all-time greatest invention.
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Tomlinson is the author of the new book “Dogland,” the reporting for which took him to dog shows all over the United States (“like a Grateful Dead tour with Milk-Bones”) before ending at the elite Westminster Dog Show.
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How far these noble hounds have come from the first wolves we tamed, and how far we’ve come with them. The piece is a great read if you love dogs; if you don’t, it might convince you.
Smartest, fastest
- Keith Richburg reports on the South Africans who are rethinking Nelson Mandela’s legacy. Many young voters, he writes, say Mandela secured freedom for the people — but not hope.
- Alexandra Petri passes on the text messages that Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe and Walt Whitman are exchanging about Taylor Swift’s new album, “The Tortured Poets Department.”
- The United States and its troops abroad have been left vulnerable to low-flying drones, warn Sens. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and Roger Wicker (R-Miss.).
It’s a goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s … The Bye-Ku.
Ravenous admins
Lick chops at faculty funds
Domesticate them!
***
Have your own newsy haiku? Email it to me, along with any questions/comments/ambiguities. See you tomorrow!
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You’re reading the Today’s Opinions newsletter. Sign up to get it in your inbox.
In today’s edition:
It is a melancholy object to those who walk through a college campus when they see the libraries, the quads and classroom doors crowded with whingeing students and professors, followed by three, four or six administrators importuning every passing donor for an alms.
“Happily, there is a simple solution,” Pomona College professor Gary Smith writes in his modest proposal for fixing college bureaucracies.
Smith explains that over three decades, Pomona’s number of professors fell from 180 to 175, while the number of administrators grew from 56 to 310. This trend, he proposes, must continue, “accelerated by not replacing retiring or departing professors and by offering generous incentives for voluntary departures.”
Of course, to maintain the student-to-faculty ratio, Pomona will let in fewer and fewer first-years. Smith writes: “A notable side effect would be a boost in Pomona’s U.S. News & World Report rankings as its admissions rate approaches zero.”
After a few more rejiggers, Smith explains, higher education’s administrators will then be able to go about their righteous work “without having to deal with whiny students and grumpy professors” at all. Bliss.
Smith carefully lays out the next steps and ultimate payoffs of the proposal — and solves the coming chatbot problem while he’s at it.
The plan is not liable to the least objection and thus ought to be implemented posthaste. And if, alas, it fails or is tardy in its yield, the great many students and professors can simply be eaten.
America’s counties are hollowing out, and the only thing keeping them from hollowing faster is immigration. A few specifics from the Editorial Board: “Immigrants slowed demographic decline in more than 1,100 counties from 2020 to 2023. … Their numbers made up more than the entire growth of the population in 131 of them.”
This phenomenon is yet more evidence to stop thinking of immigration as a burden and start considering it an opportunity — and the best one, at that, for saving the economies of the heartland.
The board presents the woes that attend depopulation (home prices, tax revenue and business profits invariably down) and all the wins that immigrants present. Obviously, there are challenges and costs to attracting immigrants away from America’s metropolises and toward sluggish cities in the middle, but they will be well worth it, the board writes.
In fact, not having immigrants around should be considered the real burden. As Catherine Rampell asks, do you want your grandma to never retire?
Immigrants, Catherine explains, are already doing the jobs that native-born workers won’t do because they are too difficult or can’t do because they are too difficult. Increasingly, immigrants are doing jobs that native-born workers would be happy to do … if there were just more native-born workers.
“To put a finer point on it,” she writes, “there’s so much demand for workers now that even the most marginal American workers, such as teenagers and people with disabilities, are doing unusually well in the labor market.”
Sure, jurisdictions could loosen child-labor laws (another modest proposal!). But don’t you think there’s a simpler solution in reach that’s better for everyone?
Chaser: Spain’s baby bust left it high and dry on labor, too, Lee Hockstader writes. Then it provided a case study in how successful increased immigration could be.
Let Tommy Tomlinson take you back 30,000 years, to early humanity and the beginnings of domestication, to the first person to say “urgh gurgh!” — translation: “good boy!” — and rub the belly of a wolf.
This, Tomlinson writes, was the world’s first dog, humankind’s all-time greatest invention.
Tomlinson is the author of the new book “Dogland,” the reporting for which took him to dog shows all over the United States (“like a Grateful Dead tour with Milk-Bones”) before ending at the elite Westminster Dog Show.
How far these noble hounds have come from the first wolves we tamed, and how far we’ve come with them. The piece is a great read if you love dogs; if you don’t, it might convince you.
It’s a goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s … The Bye-Ku.
Ravenous admins
Lick chops at faculty funds
Domesticate them!
***
Have your own newsy haiku? Email it to me, along with any questions/comments/ambiguities. See you tomorrow!
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