[Poser]

It will continue to drop as long as colleges need money and students can borrow at cheap interest rates. Otherwise, all of those buildings that were built with government money will have to be abandoned and all of those overpaid administrators laid off.

I taught for 35 years at a state university. During that time, the number of students increased about 20%, the number of buildings increased at least 100%, faculty increased by about 8%, and administrators increased by 300%.

You can fire the administrators, but you still have to maintain all of those buildings.

[Semper Vigilantis]

partly because of schools, but mostly of lack of challenging environment that encourages critical and original thinking.

Why do you need an IQ? You have a 'smart phone' with google...

[EVO X]

You can fire the administrators, but you still have to maintain all of those buildings.

You can't fire those guys if they are needed to comply with state and federal rules. I retired from a state u. I've never seen a building torn down unless it was some crap shack to make room for a bigger building. The older historical campus buildings are rehabbed with people in them or gutted to the walls. Somebody that graduated 20 years ago wouldn't recognize the town and campus near the campus core..