Better forget the in-library swimming pool!
From AFT’s contingent-faculty issues blog, commenting on the Inside Higher Ed story on state appropriations, Craig Smith notes that some of the story’s language implied that the last few years have been indulgent:
… the real rub is that things don’t seem to get better when money is better, but they get worse when times are tight. Institutions seem completely settled into this mode of exploiting cheap labor and are unwilling to re-prioritize to invest in faculty and students, while states refuse to make the necessary funding a priority or show the leadership necessary to get institutions to address the situation. And to be fair–there are a host of larger public policy issues (read: healthcare) that federal policymakers don’t appear to have the political will to address which ends up driving huge costs down on to states and institutions.
