Regarding Middlebury’s budgetary problems, I hope no one is under the impression that it is the only college guilty of overspending. On the contrary, the reliance on student services as an indicator of greater ROI has been endemic as T20 colleges all compete with each other for the tippy top of the USNews rankings which is the only major ranking system that explicitly gives bonus points to schools with the greatest “expenditures per students”, a virtual open invitation to run short-term deficits that then become structural in nature. Let there be no doubt about: There is not a college or university in existence that is not spending every penny they think they can safely get away with in order to “keep up with the Joneses”; not a single one that isn’t engaged in deficit spending as most people would understand the term, and not a single one that isn’t one recession away from having to slash staff or curtail programs in order to spare their credit ratings.