I guess this is why I never got beyond Ec 10

For a university to lay off 250 staff members because its endowment has fallen to $26 billion -- that's billion with a "b" -- seems, somehow, rather insane. Yes, I know about imbalanced budgets and all that, but it still seems a bit nuts. Glancing through this NYT article (hat tip for it to L. Sigelman at The Monkey Cage) leaves a bad taste. Not because of the hot breakfast stuff -- that's trivial nonsense -- but because of the way the NYT writes about these things. Breathlessly and, dare I suggest it, not overly intelligently. As for the stuff about the supposed horror of "being quadded" -- that was being said more than 30 years ago and it was way overblown then. Why don't they yank their reporter out of Cambridge, Mass. and tell her to go cover some interesting stories somewhere else? Perhaps that wouldn't be as much fun as hanging around Mass. Ave. and recycling decades-old clichés, but it would be better for the NYT and its remaining readers.