Let me share some stories about higher education from this week.  These aren’t technology stories, not futuristic accounts.  Instead each anecdote illustrates the enormous financial pressures squeezing most of American colleges and universities.  None of them are unusually dramatic: no closures in this post, no queen sacrifices.  Just the steady ratcheting up towards crisis.

Item: the University of Massachusetts Boston told 400 adjuncts that they might not be rehired this fall.  That is about one third of the campus instructional staff, and more than half of the non-tenured faculty:

There are 1,271 total full- and part-time faculty, according to university officials. About 775 of those are nontenure track, about 400 of whom have received notices that they might not have jobs in the fall.

Note that this comes after fall classes are already on the books.  See, things are in flux:

Although many adjuncts have already been scheduled for classes…