...faculty career paths and the arms race of student amenities.

Perhaps it was peculiar to AZ, but a BIG driver was sports because sports brings in money. When I was at the UofA, instead of funding some student-oriented things, they built skyboxes for the football stadium. Sometime in the last decade there was a row about closing the College of Music to fund some other sports thing (I don't recall the details now). It seems everything is subservient to the NCAA. And at the UofA, professors often regarding teaching as a nuisance. They didn't get evaluated on their teaching, they were evaluated on research dollars and publications. As a grad student, I saw a bit more of the inner workings of this than an undergrad student would. Professors need grad students to assist in their research, and "secrets" can be revealed.

One reason I bailed on my PhD. I didn't want to have to chase funding the rest of my life, and play the game of dividing one research paper into three parts so I could claim three publications when it came time to justify my presence. Utter rubbish.

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