Sheila Bair, president of Washington College and former chair of the FDIC, pointed out recently that private colleges developed need-based financial aid because they thought it was right for well-off students to help subsidize the educations of those who were less well off. But the reality is that there aren’t enough well-off students for all colleges to do this.

For a long time, higher education, like society, depended on growth to help it avoid tough choices. But we can’t do that anymore. Every year it’s news when a well-known college enrolls a new class that’s 50 or 100 or 300 or 4,000 short of what they’re projecting, and that results in real harm to the institution. The fact that so many colleges are that close to the edge should be a warning sign. Sweet Briar should be a warning sign, and I’m very worried that the success of the Save Sweet Briar campaign will encourage people to remain complacent. (“Eh, if things get too bad, our alumni will save us.”) The University of California controversy and its consequences should be a warning sign. There are all these warning signs and not enough people heeding them.

And I think the UC situation gives a clue as to why. The IHE story on the controversy includes quotes from folks who say that neither taxpayers nor parents blame the state for these problems, putting the blame squarely on UC. People who find it hard to get into UCLA don’t find it hard to get into UCR or UCD, but they don’t want to go there, so they say the whole System is at fault. When responsibility is diffused, it’s hard to identify properly. Which is, I suppose, what everyone except UC is counting on.

Incidentally, I don’t think you should stop returning to your favorite themes. Partly it’s because changing circumstances affect the way that we see old themes, and because old themes keep rearing their heads because we haven’t attacked them. Partly it’s because new readers of this blog need to see those issues. And, speaking as a longtime reader of this blog — I just searched for myself and found that my earliest comment appeared in 2009 — you don’t do it often enough to bore me.

I offer for consolation the words of John Irving, who once said that repeating yourself is an inevitable consequence of having something to say. (Actually, he probably said it more than once.)