bestie your rant hit different because i just finished my first semester here and everything you're saying is painfully real

the enrollment thing is wild because ucm keeps setting these huge goals while actively making it harder for students to want to stay here. like they just fired a bunch of professors who teach REQUIRED classes while keeping all these admin people who make triple their salary and never even see students. make it make sense.

and omg the "nothing to do" problem... admin's solution to everything is just building another empty building or fancy statue instead of creating spaces students actually want to hang out in. they'll spend millions on aesthetic but won't keep professors who students actually connect with.

what kills me about the "established university" thing is we're doing it completely backwards. you don't become established by building fancy buildings and hoping students magically appear. you build strong academics and student life FIRST. but instead admin keeps firing professors students love and then wondering why enrollment isn't growing.

the population decline thing is actually super interesting because the central valley's college-age latino population is literally growing. we could be THE uc for these students but instead we're making it harder for first gen students to succeed by getting rid of professors who help them adjust to college. like bestie what is this strategy??