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contract.
So after the baby boomers had passed through—like a tasty lump sliding the length of a boa constrictor—the colleges turned
to promotional strategies—to advertising—to fill the empty chairs. Suddenly college, except for the few highly selective establishments,
became a buyers' market. What students and their parents wanted had to be taken potently into account. That often meant creating
more comfortable, less challenging environments, places where almost no one failed, everything was enjoyable, and everyone
was nice.
    Just as universities must compete with one another for students, so must individual departments. At a time of rank economic
anxiety (and what time is not in America?), the English department and the history department have to contend for students
against the more success-ensuring branches, such as the science departments and the commerce school. In 1968, more than 21
percent of all the bachelor's degrees conferred in America were humanities degrees; by 1993 that total had fallen to about
13 percent, and it continues to sink. The humanities now must struggle to attract students, many of whose parents devoutly
wish that they would go elsewhere.
    One of the ways we've tried to be attractive is by loosening up. We grade much more genially than our colleagues in the sciences.
In English and history, we don't give many D's, or C's, either. (The rigors of Chem 101 may create almost as many humanities
majors per year as the splendors of Shakespeare.) A professor at Stanford explained that grades were getting better because
the students were getting smarter every year. Anything, I suppose, is possible.
    Along with easing up on grades, many humanities departments have relaxed major requirements. There are some good reasons for
introducing more choice into the curricula and requiring fewer standard courses. But the move jibes with a tendency to serve
the students instead of challenging them. Students can float in and out of classes during the first two weeks of the term
without making any commitment. The common name for this span—shopping period—attests to the mentality that's in play.
    One result of the university's widening elective leeway is to give students more power over teachers. Those who don't like
you can simply avoid you. If the students dislike you en masse, you can be left with an empty classroom. I've seen other professors,
especially older ones, often those with the most to teach, suffer real grief at not having enough students sign up for their
courses: their grading was too tough; they demanded too much; their beliefs were too far out of line with the existing dispensation.
It takes only a few such incidents to draw other professors into line.
    Before students arrive, universities ply them with luscious ads, guaranteeing them a cross between summer camp and lotusland.
When they get to campus, flattery, entertainment, and prepro-fessional training are theirs, if that's what they want. The
world we present them is not a world elsewhere, an ivory tower world, but one that's fully continuous with the American entertainment
and consumer culture they've been living in. They hardly know they've left home. Is it a surprise, then, that this generation
of students—steeped in consumer culture before they go off to school; treated as potent customers by the university well before
they arrive, then pandered to from day one—are inclined to see the books they read as a string of entertainments to be enjoyed
without effort or languidly cast aside?
    So I had my answer. The university had merged almost seamlessly with the consumer culture that exists beyond its gates. Universities
were running like businesses, and very effective businesses at that. Now I knew why my students were greeting great works
of mind and heart as consumer goods. They came looking for what they'd had in the past, Total Entertainment All the Time,
and the university at large did all it could to maintain the flow. (Though where