Work funny

We had a departmental meeting a couple of weeks ago. Much dreaded because of a terrifying disconnect between the realities of global financial collapse and our faculty's view that this somehow shouldn't impact their mission to write esoteric things, teach boutique courses, and generally come and go as they please. Add to this the prospect of considering a temporary halt to recruiting PhD students (for reasons which will be exemplified below) in the face of some faculty who cling to the idea of being a doctoral granting department no matter what that looks like in practice. In the end the anticipated fireworks didn't go off; perhaps there had been enough preparatory small group conversations that people had begun to internalize the idea that it is, in fact, not possible to proceed with business as usual when you've just learned that 9-12% of your state appropriated funds will be permanently reappropriated by July 1st. But the really choice meeting moments had to do with our director of graduate studies reporting on the actuality of the PhD students we currently have. There was really not much to say when confronted with such facts as one post comps student who has been maintaining current registration (which you do by paying for 3 credits of tuition every semester) for SEVENTEEN years. As the DGS deadpannedly remarked, "Aside from the ethical question of how we let someone languish, but pony up cash, to such an extent?... four of the five committee members NO LONGER WORK HERE, and the course work is so far in the past that the discipline has surely moved on so what sort of dissertation would the person possibly be writing... The full DGS report was peppered by exclamations of "WHAT?" and the like from the faculty. Even the most staunch defenders of the PhD programs had the good sense to look dutifully troubled by the state of disarray.