What an odd euphemism.

From the observation of several college professors (including my wife and mother) the quality of students is definitely going down. I don't think it is intelligence, rather a lack of effort and studiousness, and an entitled mentality.

Examples: 1) students expect to be given the notes in an electronic format 2) students don't submit graded homework 3) students text or surf the web during lecture rather than taking notes 4) students parents call to complain about their kid's grades

Yet, they all think they are going to medical school. My wife is a Chemistry prof, and she has people who fail intro Chem 2 and 3 times thinking they are going to become doctors.

I blame a combination of rampant grade inflation in HS (and on standardized tests) and coddling helicopter parents.

Isn't some of this on professors though? My wife and I were both pretty shocked at how lax the standards were in our different Masters programs. Homework is turned in late - no big deal. Grades can be changed as long as you have a conversation with the professor. Students ask for all of the things you list because professors will accommodate them, so why not ask for the moon? And why work hard when they kid sleeping next to you will likely get a passing grade because professors are loathe to flunk kids out?

what I've never understood is how so many people seemingly deny or forget how dumb they and their friends were at that age.

This. I agree there are lots of stupid kids uncurious about the world. There are also a lot of stupid, uncurious people YOUR age and MY age. Just turn on any cable news network to find evidence of that.

The folks I work for/with are helicopter parents. I feel much sympathy for the teachers who dare give their kids anything less than an A- on a test.

It's not just the parents. A few years ago I taught legal writing at a top-tier law school, where we were required to grade on a curve centered on B+: out of a class of 12, I was allowed to give two A/A- grades. The expressions on these kids' faces when I explained all that - and the subsequent whining and grade-grubbing - were just pathetic. Especially once I saw their (general lack of) writing skills put into action. A couple of them worked hard and genuinely improved over the semester, but mostly they seemed to believe that Mommy's Perfect Little Snowflake was already just fine and would like a top grade right now, please.

EDIT: as an adjunct, I didn't have an office at the school, but at the end of every class I reminded the students that they had my email & phone number, and should contact me if they wanted to arrange a meeting or discuss an assignment - before class, after class, weekends, whenever. Not one of them ever took me up on it, although several did find time to complain in evaluations about me being "unavailable" outside class hours.

Teens/early 20ers are like idiot savants- they can be as smart as an adult in some ways- smarter in others (the average 18 year old simply paying attention can learn an incredible amount of stuff- complex stuff), but in other ways just so dumb.

The operative words there are "paying attention", and they apply just as well to adults. The problem now is that there are so many mindless but entertaining things to divert our attention and prevent our minds from focusing.

------------------------------------------------------

Things may have been different for people of Harveys generation, where you either were married with a job by the age of 14 or you died of tuberculosis,

Or more likely, wound up on a March of Dimes poster stamp. If cellphones had existed in the days before the Salk vaccine, every circuit in New York City would have broken down from the calls between anxious mothers and their children in upstate Summer camps.

hating the ubiquity and overuse of handheld phones is going to go down in my personal history as the line that i crossed into the 'get off my lawn' generation.

Spending one's entire life in a continuously networked world is the new generation gap. Definitely Future Shock-y where things change before we have a chance to understand impact and best practices of them.

This continuous-network generation is also a generation that grew up with constrained civil liberties and indefinite war. I don't know how that bodes.

Definitely Future Shock-y where things change before we have a chance to understand impact and best practices of them.

How about things changing before I've had the chance to absorb the previous change? :(

Side note: I can't imagine any adult I know being OK with an 11 year old making gunpowder. That said, I'm pretty sure my mother never heard anything about this.

Note2: Gunpowder's trickier to make than we thought. Our rocket just burned.

A friend and I made some gunpowder when we were 13 or so; we were going to make a cannon out of some old galvanized pipe. Gunpowder (at least our version of it) was easy enough to make; we just ground up some charcoal briquets and purchased the other two ingredients, sulfur and potassium nitrate, at the local drug store. What we didn't realize was that gunpowder needs to be compressed in order to explode, otherwise it just burns rather slowly. We decided to burn the gunpowder we made to see what would happen. As I recall we put a bunch of it on a tree stump in my backyard, lit the fuse and hid behind the garage. What happened was the gunpowder did burn and created a huge amount of noxious smoke. What also happened was that my mother got extremely angry at me for filling the house with smoke. Youth, what a concept.

If cellphones had existed in the days before the Salk vaccine, every circuit in New York City would have broken down from the calls between anxious mothers and their children in upstate Summer camps.

This comment is funny because the thread was making me think about a NYT article that appeared a year or two ago about how summer camps deal with the age of the helicopter parent. Many now have a fulltime employee whose job is just to deal with nervous and angry parents, a position which never existed before. The kids are usually supposed to have a clean break from their parents - no phone calls, no computers, just letters. And kids learning to deal with problems on their own is sort of the point of summer camp ... there's a bully? You're scared of the dark? Can't run to mommy. Deal with it kid.

But many parents encourage and enable their children to break the rules by sneaking them extra cellphones (literally giving a kid two phones so one suspicion is lifted after the first is found) and then that leads to the parents learning about these problems and getting all up in the business of the camp - calling to demand that their child is moved to another cabin, or whatever. It sounds like a nightmare for the camp administrators.

I was a camper and then counselor in the 90s, just before the cellphone and email booms were able to make a dent in the life of our camp. But we did have other modern problems - the parents who decided that summer camp was a great opportunity to take their kid off of Ritalin, for example.

Has taking along an actual book occurred to you? Not being snarky; I just assume that your latter sentence would no longer be applicable.

I used to. It just changed the question to "you're reading in a bar? Really?"

I love my Nook. I don't have the color one just the regular E-Ink version and it's wonderful. The best part of it is when I go on vacation rather than bringing 7-8 books with me I just bring the device, it makes life so much easier and as you note it does feel roughly like a real book in terms of size.

HIT IT!

Why can't they be like we were, perfect in every way?

Why can't they be like we were, perfect in every way?

It all went downhill after Jack Morris retired.

[106] Yeah -- that's exactly what "Future Shock" is. In fact, the term "generation gap" is showing its age, as many changes are no longer generational, but happen over a smaller handful of years.

I used to. It just changed the question to "you're reading in a bar? Really?"

I haven't darkened the door of a bar in ages (as I've whined before, Crohn's means that I haven't been able to drink even a coke in years, much less anything alcoholic), but the last time I remember being in one, about 11 years ago in Mobile, I had a really good read along ... something from the library (which is to say I have no idea whatsoever of what the title might've been) about the early days of paleontology. I'm pretty sure I had a much better time with my book than the people I was with the ambiance & clientele, since they gave the place -- which had been talked up by our hosts as the greatest! place! ever! -- extremely withering reviews.

Serious question - why would anyone go to a bar to read a book? You can read a book at home, and the drinks are much cheaper there. I thought the major selling point for bars was to be around other people?

[114] is there some (perhaps now quaint) notion of being around other people in a community (many of whom with which you are acquainted), but not necessarily directly interacting with them?

Serious question - why would anyone go to a bar to read a book? You can read a book at home, and the drinks are much cheaper there. I thought the major selling point for bars was to be around other people?

Some people like to people watch and being in a room all the time can get claustrophobic or if you've got a couple of hours to kill and want to nurse a beer or two instead of drinking coffee.

I would think part of being fundamentally sound is knowing when you haven't been given the bunt sign. :-)

Has anyone ever kept track of failed attempts to sacrifice? That would be a sort of interesting stat.

They do! For the retrosheet era, "sac bunt attempts" are on the "more stats" page for every hitter. (These attempts include only fair bunts and foul-bunt strikeouts, not plate appearances in which a bunt was attempted and then taken off.)

Jim Rice had 5 successful sacrifice bunts in his career, perfectly matching his 5 unsuccessful sac bunts.

Serious question - why would anyone go to a bar to read a book? You can read a book at home, and the drinks are much cheaper there. I thought the major selling point for bars was to be around other people?

I live alone so as much as I enjoy my solitude sometimes I just like ambient noise and social activity. The funny thing is I rarely drink, I usually get a diet coke and something to eat but I always tip very well and go to places regularly so bartenders don't seem to mind.

The other thing is when I'm at a bar I'm able to relax a bit differently. At home I'm always thinking I should do some laundry or organize my file cabinet or some such thing. If I'm at the bar I'm out and can just relax and do my thing.

Most bars are lit pretty dimly, no? I suppose Nooks are self-illuminating, though, which would be another reason to prefer one over a book.

Isn't some of this on professors though? My wife and I were both pretty shocked at how lax the standards were in our different Masters programs. Homework is turned in late - no big deal. Grades can be changed as long as you have a conversation with the professor. Students ask for all of the things you list because professors will accommodate them, so why not ask for the moon? And why work hard when they kid sleeping next to you will likely get a passing grade because professors are loathe to flunk kids out?

Sure, some professors aid and abet this. But my wife regularly flunks (or they drop the class) up to 40% of her intro Chem students. They still don't study. The ones who've failed before, and are repeating, don't do the work either. Somehow they think they'll learn by osmosis. Lots of them then take the class in summer school at another college (thinking it's the prof's fault); they fail there too.

EDIT: as an adjunct, I didn't have an office at the school, but at the end of every class I reminded the students that they had my email & phone number, and should contact me if they wanted to arrange a meeting or discuss an assignment - before class, after class, weekends, whenever. Not one of them ever took me up on it, although several did find time to complain in evaluations about me being "unavailable" outside class hours.

My wife gets exactly the same crap. She has 6 hours of office hours every week, and is available after class. Students don't show up. They make appointments and then still don't show up. But, the day before the exam, they want he to come in on her one off-day to tutor them.

Most bars are lit pretty dimly, no? I suppose Nooks are self-illuminating, though, which would be another reason to prefer one over a book.

Mine isn't but I've got a little battery-powered reading light that works quite nicely.

I live alone so as much as I enjoy my solitude sometimes I just like ambient noise and social activity. The funny thing is I rarely drink, I usually get a diet coke and something to eat but I always tip very well and go to places regularly so bartenders don't seem to mind.

The other thing is when I'm at a bar I'm able to relax a bit differently. At home I'm always thinking I should do some laundry or organize my file cabinet or some such thing. If I'm at the bar I'm out and can just relax and do my thing.

I get that, but, why a bar and not a coffee shop, diner or restaurant?

My wife gets exactly the same crap. She has 6 hours of office hours every week, and is available after class. Students don't show up. They make appointments and then still don't show up. But, the day before the exam, they want he to come in on her one off-day to tutor them.

Q: Does the school administration then support the prof?
A: Yes, to precisely the extent that the prof pays the administrators' salaries.

Not that it matters, but this is the book I mentioned before. I have absolutely no head for science, but I'm quite fond of nicely done popular treatments of the history thereof, & this one qualifies as far as paleontology is concerned.

I get that, but, why a bar and not a coffee shop, diner or restaurant?

Restaurants don't work because I still feel isolated sitting at a table alone. No real reason for not a coffee shop. I think the proximity to people I get in a bar is probably part of the appeal. Sit there, read my book, watch a game and let the conversation go on and if I wind up chatting, so be it.

If I didn't go to restaurants alone, I wouldn't go to restaurants, period. (Not that that would be a bad thing.) I would no more sit at a table without a book or at least a magazine than I would ... I dunno ... drive down the street with my eyes closed.

Q: Does the school administration then support the prof?
A: Yes, to precisely the extent that the prof pays the administrators' salaries.

She's never had any problem with the Administration, and now she has tenure.

I'm just shocked at how the students don't learn. I mean, you don't do the homework or pay attention, and you get 30% on the first test. Do they come for help? Do they start turning in the homework? Nope, they think it'll magically turn around. They repeat this for the whole semester, get an F, and then rinse and repeat in summer school, or the next Fall.

I'm just shocked at how the students don't learn. I mean, you don't do the homework or pay attention, and you get 30% on the first test. Do they come for help? Do they start turning in the homework? Nope, they think it'll magically turn around. They repeat this for the whole semester, get an F, and then rinse and repeat in summer school, or the next Fall.

It's annoying, no question. 19-year-olds are mostly pretty stupid in their decision-making, even if they can be very smart in their critical thinking. I never can predict which students will suddenly disappear or reappear on me over the semester.

I don't think this has anything to do with society comma the breakdown of. It's just that 19-year-olds are 19 years old. That's not new.

It's annoying, no question. 19-year-olds are mostly pretty stupid in their decision-making, even if they can be very smart in their critical thinking. I never can predict which students will suddenly disappear or reappear on me over the semester.

I don't think this has anything to do with society, the breakdown of. It's just that 19-year-olds are 19 years old. That's not new.

Except that I'm talking to teachers who've been at it between 8 and 25 years, and they say it's getting much worse.

As a fellow bar-reader, Jose's explanation in #125 is right on. A bar is a much more relaxing place for me than a coffee shop - I do a lot of writing and editing and grading in coffee shops, so they feel like a work environment. At a bar, I can have a beer and relax, I might have a conversation with a patron or a bartender, I might watch a little sports, or I might do some reading.

I eat at restaurants alone occasionally, but I never eat alone at a table. Only at the bar. Where, again, a book can come in handy.

But that isn't anything new. There have always been students that flunked out or never studied and so on. The difference is that more kids are going to college so instead of having a student body of 500 students with 50 of them being deadweight we have a student body of 5000 with 500 of them being deadweight. Or it might even be 1000 kids who are deadweight since the pressure to go to college is greater now than in the past and with easier to obtain student loans more kids who shouldn't go and didn't in the past are now going to college.

Raise the standards of admission, cut the amount of kids to gain entrance to school, and remove subsidized school loans and suddenly you'll see colleges become the home of the best and brightest. Nothing will have really changed other than the deadweight was removed.

I don't think this has anything to do with society, the breakdown of. It's just that 19-year-olds are 19 years old. That's not new.

Except that I'm talking to teachers who've been at it between 8 and 25 years, and they say it's getting much worse.

I have counter-anecdotes from similarly-tenured teachers.

EDIT: To put some further words on it, there is a strong tendency among humans to believe that the latest generation is a moral disaster and society is breaking down. Change often reads as decline to people who aren't the agents of that change. I tend to doubt it's a good reading.

I'm just shocked at how the students don't learn. I mean, you don't do the homework or pay attention, and you get 30% on the first test. Do they come for help? Do they start turning in the homework? Nope, they think it'll magically turn around. They repeat this for the whole semester, get an F, and then rinse and repeat in summer school, or the next Fall.

That's because, fundamentally, colleges and universities have been taken over by the MBAs and the marketers like everything else over the past roughly three decades. And because, concomitantly, no institution can be discussed anymore other than through the lens and in the lingo of the marketer and the MBA.

Thus, the university is no longer a unique institution where less experienced and less knowledgable, still impressionable people go to learn things from wiser, more experienced people -- with the hard work and built-in "power" relationship and "imbalance" inherent to the enterprise -- but instead a place to be "branded" and marketed, and where the students are first and foremost not students, but instead "consumers."

The same thing has happened in law and health care and, assuredly, other things.

(*) The more "empowered," the better.

Change often reads as decline to people who aren't the agents of that change. I tend to doubt it's a good reading.

So do I, but someday the change might actually be decline and the reading might be right.

The decline really isn't in the latest generation anyway, but in more adult generations.

I have a feeling different institutions are moving in different directions. When I was at my liberal arts school in the early 00s, we heard that every single freshman class was "the best ever," and it was probably true. The applicants were smarter and more accomplished every year*. But compare that to, say, a mediocre state school. The state school used to draw the smartest kids from all the little communities in the state, but now those kids are competing to go to places like my liberal arts school a thousand miles away ... at the same time, the state school is being inundated with crappy applicants that a generation prior might not have considered college, and a lot of them get in and enroll.


* Even if they increasingly have the modern issues of not understanding non-Wikipedia research and such.

So do I, but someday the change might actually be decline and the reading might be right.

Oh, certainly. It's entirely possible. Decline happens, crises happen. It's just that the charge has been made so many times without sufficient evidence that I need a lot of evidence to be convinced.

The applicants were smarter and more accomplished every year*.

I actually doubt the first part.

They are "more accomplished" b/c schools now demand fancy resumes, so HS students focus on "accomplishments" that are usually mostly window dressing.

I'm probably among the last generation that could get into Ivy league and equivalent schools based on pure academics. All I had going for me was GPA/SAT/GRE.

Now that the emphasis is on 63 clubs/sports and made-up charities, and how you're saving the world, you will automatically get more "accomplished" students (i.e. students who play the game and burnish their resumes) and fewer really bright students who rather be reading, or solving equations, or in the lab, than joining clubs and starting charity drive that hit up their parents friends.

If I ran Harvard/Yale/Princeton/Stanford/etc., I'd return to the admission exam as the sole determinant of admission. It would be self-designed and administered. 3 Parts, weeding down the applicant pool: 1) multiple choice general aptitude and subject knowledge (SAT/GRE-esque) to get me to ~15,000, 2) Essay exam to get me to 5,000, 3) oral exam to get me my 2000 offers.

Thus, the university is no longer a unique institution where less experienced and less knowledgable, still impressionable people go to learn things from wiser, more experienced people -- with the hard work and built-in "power" relationship and "imbalance" inherent to the enterprise -- but instead a place to be "branded" and marketed, and where the students are first and foremost not students, but instead "consumers."

Yes, the relationship of the student to the school has changed, become more of a customer/service provider dynamic, and largely due to the actions of the schools themselves. Granted young people are lazy and feckless and lack respect for all that was good and right when we were kids, but I think the fact that colleges are so absurdly expensive combined with the devaluation of a college degree have put tremendous pressure on college kids to distinguish themselves through good grades. But earning good grades takes work, so the kids do what anybody who's paying a boatload for a service that's not making them happy does; complain loudly until the service provider makes you happy.

Yes, the relationship of the student to the school has changed, become more of a customer/service provider dynamic, and largely due to the actions of the schools themselves. Granted young people are lazy and feckless and lack respect for all that was good and right when we were kids, but I think the fact that colleges are so absurdly expensive combined with the devaluation of a college degree have put tremendous pressure on college kids to distinguish themselves through good grades. But earning good grades takes work, so the kids do what anybody who's paying a boatload for a service that's not making them happy does; complain loudly until the service provider makes you happy.

The interesting thing is that the increased cost of college is almost entirely driven by administration. In the last 30 years, the number of faculty per student hasn't risen, faculty pay hasn't exceeded inflation, and endowments have grown.

What has gone up is the number of highly paid administrators. One article I saw is that the administrator:faculty ratio has gone from ~1:5 to 1:1. And the administrators usually make much more than average faculty do.

If cellphones had existed in the days before the Salk vaccine, every circuit in New York City would have broken down from the calls between anxious mothers and their children in upstate Summer camps.

This comment is funny because the thread was making me think about a NYT article that appeared a year or two ago about how summer camps deal with the age of the helicopter parent. Many now have a fulltime employee whose job is just to deal with nervous and angry parents, a position which never existed before. The kids are usually supposed to have a clean break from their parents - no phone calls, no computers, just letters. And kids learning to deal with problems on their own is sort of the point of summer camp ... there's a bully? You're scared of the dark? Can't run to mommy. Deal with it kid.

Yeah, that is kind of pathetic, but in the case I was referring to there actually were polio epidemics that broke out in those camps every Summer, not in every one of them but enough to give city parents cause to freak out. When I was five, one broke out in the only Summer camp I ever went to, and my Mom was up there on the first train to get me the hell out of there and back to Manhattan. Turned out I never even had so much as a fever, but when you've actually seen friends your age in braces, you can begin to understand your parents' reaction.

Hee hee! I'm a bleeding-heart liberal, but I agree with snapper and The Good Face. And Clement of Alexandria.

The change is real, it's annoying in many ways, but it will still take some time to know whether it's a disaster. The good students are still there, and to this point, having the not so good students around doesn't seem to be keeping them from learning, developing, and achieving, or at least I hope it isn't. I haven't taught for a couple of years, but I always had three or four students who seemed really bright and motivated and so forth. The rest weren't very motivated, which is sort of understandable since it wasn't a major class, and I could tell that some of them were smart and some of them weren't. The ones who were smart did okay and the ones who weren't didn't. There are still fabulous young scholars emerging, but of course the youngest of them were undergraduates about when I was, and things were quite a bit different when I was an undergraduate than they are now. On the other hand, I went to a relatively small northeastern school (though it was a state school), so maybe that's why things were different. It's hard to say whether we paid attention in class, did our reading, and spent serious time on our homework for cultural reasons or technological reasons. There was no wireless internet, and very few students were carrying laptops around. But there was also a low student-to-faculty ratio, and for that and other reasons, it did seem more like an education than a product. I'm not sure I could say the same thing about the atmosphere at other places I've seen. As well as good young scholars, there are a lot of what I would call "educated idiots" emerging, but I don't expect that's a new development--in fact, I'm absolutely sure it isn't.

I'm probably among the last generation that could get into Ivy league and equivalent schools based on pure academics. All I had going for me was GPA/SAT/GRE.

Then you must have attended the only elite school without legacy admissions or favoritism towards athletes or applicants from underrepresented geographic regions. If such a school has ever existed, I'd sure like to know about it. I know damn well that Duke has never been one of them, certainly not for the past 89 years since it got its foundation money and became Big Time.

The interesting thing is that the increased cost of college is almost entirely driven by administration. In the last 30 years, the number of faculty per student hasn't risen, faculty pay hasn't exceeded inflation, and endowments have grown.

What has gone up is the number of highly paid administrators. One article I saw is that the administrator:faculty ratio has gone from ~1:5 to 1:1. And the administrators usually make much more than average faculty do.

Yep. Many universities have spent lavishly on various construction projects as well, but administrative bloat is where a great deal of those high tuitions wind up. I hesistate to call it a driver, since I'm not 100% on the causation, but it's certainly where a lot of the money is going.

Then you must have attended the only elite school without legacy admissions or favoritism towards athletes or applicants from underrepresented geographic regions. If such a school has ever existed, I'd sure like to know about it. I know damn well that Duke has never been one of them, certainly not for the past 89 years since it got its foundation money and became Big Time.

I attended Harvard. I had no legacy, was from suburban NY, had no sports beyond JV baseball, and a trivial number of clubs/activities (most of which I joined junior year for resume padding).

At that time, I would guess that ~40% of the class was there on pure academics.

Yep. Many universities have spent lavishly on various construction projects as well, but administrative bloat is where a great deal of those high tuitions wind up. I hesistate to call it a driver, since I'm not 100% on the causation, but it's certainly where a lot of the money is going.

It's the driver. Those are the people that run the schools, the system is run for their benefit. If Mr. Dean of Students now has 8 Asst. Deans under him making $100-$150K, well then by Jove he needs to make $300K for his vast managerial expertise.

I've become grumpy old man. Back in my day we didn't have 2 assistant vice provosts for every real teacher. And we didn't have luxury condos to live in. Freshman dorm was a concrete building styled after military barracks. That's the way it was and we liked it. We loved it.

My situation was quite similar to Snapper's. I had slightly more on my "resume", but I strained to fill out the Ivy applications. MIT (and especially CalTech) applications, on the other hand, seemed to be written with me in mind. In the end I decided to go to an Ivy league school.

. Many universities have spent lavishly on various construction projects as well

One of the "other reasons" in the antipenultimate line of my post is the fact that the facilities at my school ranged from relatively old to downright ancient. It made it feel like a school, damn it, not a resort. They've built a bunch of stuff since I was there, naturally.

Yep. Many universities have spent lavishly on various construction projects as well, but administrative bloat is where a great deal of those high tuitions wind up. I hesistate to call it a driver, since I'm not 100% on the causation, but it's certainly where a lot of the money is going.

It's the driver. Those are the people that run the schools, the system is run for their benefit. If Mr. Dean of Students now has 8 Asst. Deans under him making $100-$150K, well then by Jove he needs to make $300K for his vast managerial expertise.

I'm not sure. I think it's a driver, but I think the larger driver is the massive increase in demand for a college degree, driven in turn by cultural and economic shifts of the past several decades.

My take is that the money comes first, and then you have the question of how to distribute it - to administration, to faculty, to non-faculty workers, to students, to building projects and endowment growth. And the administration are the ones who actually get to make those decisions. The faculty have some structural power, unlike non-faculty workers and students, but the administrators generally see themselves as directly opposed to faculty in a small-scale class conflict, so the faculty gets overrun. And then pretty much all the money goes to the administration, as well as to building projects and endowment growth, which enhance the status of the university and the administration without giving money to other competing groups.

Some of the tuition growth is driven by the administration seeing they can arrogate even more money to themselves, but I think that's more secondary.

I'm not sure. I think it's a driver, but I think the larger driver is the massive increase in demand for a college degree, driven in turn by cultural and economic shifts of the past several decades.

Yeah, but most colleges are non-for-profits and state institutions. They didn't have any imperative to respond to increased demand by raising costs. They could have just expanded enrollment, or become more selective.

The only reason to raise tuition was to enrich administrators. As you rightly note, the faculty got bupkus.

In a way, it's very similar to the governance problem you have in corporate America. Except at tightly held companies, CEOs and top-execs run corporations almost exclusively for their own benefit; shareholders, employees and customers are an after-thought. They are so insulated from hostile takeovers, that they have similarly unchecked power, and have responded exactly the same way.