Education wasn't on a sustainable course anyway (no pun intended). They couldn't keep increasing costs, increasing numbers of students, living off of the work of non-tenure-track instructors who got paid a pittance, and growing the size and cost of the administration. I think that was getting close to the breaking point, even without Covid.
>living off of the work of non-tenure-track instructors who got paid a pittance
This is, in my opinion, the number one problem in higher education right now. Adjunct/associate/part-time faculty are good, many of them are great. But the experience with those people is just not the same as with full-time tenured faculty. When a faculty member is worried about whether or not they'll have a course load next semester, their incentives are vastly different.
This is a system that needs to die.
Source: I have worked in higher education for a couple of decades now. Adjunt/associate/part-time has exploded since 2009-10 or so. It's ridiculous.
Education wasn't on a sustainable course anyway (no pun intended). They couldn't keep increasing costs, increasing numbers of students, living off of the work of non-tenure-track instructors who got paid a pittance, and growing the size and cost of the administration. I think that was getting close to the breaking point, even without Covid.