The Work of Saving Higher Education

I pushed my chips to the center of the table on a rain‑soaked April morning in 2015, halfway through a “young tenure‑track faculty breakfast” thrown by the president of the anonymous commuter university where I taught. We were supposed to beam with gratitude, sip burnt coffee, eat dry pastries, and describe our research in soothing tones so that the goateed man in the puffy, too-tight suit at the head of the table could nod his approval while rambling about the school achieving “Tier One” status, whatever that meant (I still don’t know).