When Extreme Conditions become Normal

In a recent blog post on this site, we said that those governing and leading educational institutions sometimes fail to act soon enough when institutional finances are going bad. Using Hemingway’s famous quote in The Sun Also Rises, we said that dire financial straits seldom happen all at once even though it may feel that way. Rather, schools go bankrupt slowly, sometimes very slowly, until a catastrophic point of inevitability happens (see recent college closures as case examples).

Through subsequent engagement with readers, we can add that a factor contributing to a slowness to act can be cultural; e.g., the school has always teetered on the edge of a financial abyss, so it becomes easy for trustees and other leaders to normalize conditions that should horrify them. One president whose school is in extremis tells of a longtime board member who, when presented with the acute shortfall, said, “What’s the problem? This sounds like just another Tuesday here. We have always been in trouble, and we always make it through somehow.”

The above is the sort of normalization that leads to a slow dwindling of assets and then a rapid downward cascade. Becoming inured to what should otherwise shock us is never a good thing no matter how adaptive it may seem.