Do Universities Actually Need Students and Teachers?

In case you missed this last month, Pomona College economist Gary N. Smith swiftly calculated that the number of tenured and tenure-track professors at his school declined from 1990 to 2022, while the number of administrators nearly sextupled in that period.
“Happily, there is a simple solution,” Smith wrote in a rather droll Washington Post column. Following in the tradition of Anglo-Irish satirist Jonathan Swift, his extremely modest and not at all revolutionary proposal called for getting rid of all faculty and students at Pomona so that the college could fulfill its destiny as an institution run by and for nonteaching functionaries. At the very least, he wrote, “the elimination of professors and students would greatly improve most colleges’ financial position.”
This gives rise to the thought that we could save far greater sums of money by closing numerous institutions and letting the chips fall where they may.
Keep in mind that, if this is starting to sound like the stuff that Tom Lehrer ballads and songs are made of, you’re probably eight, although it’s unlikely he will take pen to paper.
Tom Lehrer, you may recall, or really should know, is a satirical singer/songwriter who was most active in the middle three decades of the 20th century, the 1950s, 1960s, and the 1970s. He had the ability to take what sounded like a pleasant little ditty that your grandparents might have enjoyed then give it a subversive twist. A song that starts off, “Spring is here/Spring is here/Full of skittles/And full of beer” is the beginning for what was his first hit, “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park.” A number called “National Brotherhood Week” sounds somewhat upbeat and harmless until it calls out the hypocrisy of the celebration by singing “it’s fun to eulogize the/ people you despite / as long as you don’t let ‘em in your schools.”
In my case, Lehrer and his acerbic wit were introduced to me in seventh grade science by Mr. Stigman, who played the song “Pollution” in class – “If you visit / American city / you will find it / very pretty / just two things of which you must be aware / don’t drink the water and don’t breath the air..”
As one song’s refrain goes, “Who’s next?”
(Photo: Accura Media Group)