If they can’t be trusted to fix the problem themselves with a 5 year phase in period they most definitely can’t be trusted to fix the problem immediately…so I don’t get your point.
Everyone involved in the current process has an incentive to not change anything. If you go through the existing process with some five year target, the universities and bureaucrats will bleed you to death with procedures and lawsuits and lobbying, as they did with prior efforts under Obama. It’s the same way NIMBYs kill development projects. The only way to change it is shock and awe.
What article are we taking about? The response to “shock and awe” was rescind offers to students, not cut down on administrators or address inefficiencies.
That’s a temporary measure. The universities know that in he long run they need students but can cut administrators. But at least the immediate reaction is controlling costs rather than geering up to lobby and litigate their way out of it.
The US has a peculiar culture where elite academic institutions are very much willing to limit their numbers of students, so it's not clear to me that they will in the long run control costs. Large, prestigious US universities have historically preferred funding more administrators over more students.
