Even before the shrinking, faculty jobs in academia have been extremely competetive. Even twenty years ago, it could take highly qualified young scientists with PhD and two postdocs to apply to one hundred faculty jobs before landing a tenure-track position. Any student going into a graduate program with the goal of a career in academia needs to be aware of that.

That's crummy. We use undergrads as tutors and peer-learning assistants in addition to the classes, but not instead. And for advanced math, not intro? Those undergrads don't have the necessary math education of classes beyond what they're teaching, Why do people keep attending such places?

Cuts in public universities have been happening for decades, because state appropriations have been significantly down. I remember rounds and rounds of budget cuts where all departments were asked to give up a certain percentage of their budget (one year we elected to give up the office phones). Now coupled with the decrease in enrollment due to demographics (fewer young people of college age) and the resulting tuition loss, every college faces problems. Often, colleges try to make the cuts by not replacing faculty and staff who retire. The positions simply won't get filled again, leaving fewer people to do the work. In the twenty years I have been teaching at a public U, there were several rounds of retirement incentives where older tenured faculty were offered money if they retired. Several colleagues have taken advantage of the opportunities. Some colleges fill the gaps in teaching power with adjuncts or other non-tenure-track faculty. But yeah, nothing new about that. In rare cases, entire degree programs are eliminated and departments are closed, and that makes headlines, as was recently the case at WVU.

yeah, that would certainly skew things.

I have taken more precautions against bears in my life than against men. Black bears don't want to harm you, but they want your food, and that can end badly. For hungry grizzlies, humans *are* food. Stats don't make sense here because there are few situations when a human is exposed to bears, compared to many more situations when she is exposed to other humans. If I have to pick between ONE bear vs ONE random man in close encounter, I would choose the man, because the probability that he is a normal dude who doesn't want to harm me is much higher than the chance that the bear is neither hungry nor interested in my food nor feels threatened by my proximity.

The shape with the largest area-to-perimeter ratio is the circle.

I know a woman who had embraced the tradwife life already a decade ago when we were in homeschool group together. And I know several polyamorous persons. For some, it seems to be working great; for others, it didn't and they ended divorcing from the husband who ended up preferring the mutual girlfriend. Small rural town here.

Dreams tell you truths your subconscious knows but your rational brain represses. As for whacky teenage dreams: I still vividly recall dreaming at around age 13 that *I* was being beheaded. In the dream, I was aware that I was dreaming and I recall asking myself in the dream whether it would hurt even though it is just a dream. ETA: In times of emotional upheaval and conflict, I had extremely vivid dreams that were very clear messages that didn't need a shrink to interpret.

You're fasting anyway the day of the prep. The day before you have to eat light and bland foods, so you could skip those. Otoh, it may be easier to fast the day of the procedure- you can't have anything in the morning, and I was so queasy from the sedation meds that not eating would have been easy. Not sure what that would accomplish, though. What's the point?

Sending good thoughts.

If they are sick, they know before the lesson. For a makeup, they must notify you ahead of time, perhaps the morning of. No shows without prior notice don't get makeups.

Do you mean WordPerfect? Yes, I used that for my dissertation and for many years while teaching, because it's equation editor was far superior to the one Word had at that time.

Agreeing with previous posters. Best is to learn by doing. It's not rocket science, and using software to accomplish a specific task is the most efficient way to learn Google docs functions very similar to Word, and many college students use that. They won't need complicated Excel operations in college, beyond what they can easily figure out. What do you want them to do with Adobe? Are you willing to pay for the software? It's unlikely the college will use that as standard software (ours doesn't have a campus license), unless InDesign is part of a layout class and then it'll be taught there. I have no idea how many of our students can actually type and whether that really makes a difference. Mine all take notes by hand ( some on tablets, not paper). I doubt typing speed is a limiting factor for student essays ;)

One big issue with Covid for colleges is that the quality of the highschool education suffered greatly. Students are less well academically prepared (the math we see is frightening), and more students have mental health problems. I have been teaching the same course for over 20 years, and it is no longer possible to teach at the same level as back then. We have a complete record of all the past exams, and even students have commented that today's exams are significantly easier than the exams from a decade ago. Attendance is down, resilience is down, attention span and reading comprehension are down, math skills have scary gaps. It is impossible to hold them to the same standards as we did before. But we have to teach the students we get and not the ones we wish we had. And yes, it short-changes the strong students who aren't adequately challenged. It's incredibly frustrating for instructors. My colleagues see the same issues across disciplines.

As they should.