But there were tradeoffs to this approach. Many faculty members were so concerned with their own research that they neglected undergraduate education. And the proliferation of laboratories and research institutes built through the federal government's largesse was costly to maintain. One of the most serious cash flow problems on many campuses now is deferred maintenance, yet universities continue to put up new buildings. The pressures to continue the edifice complex are hard to curb.
Wealthy alumni donate money so they can have their names on new buildings.
In terms of inflation-adjusted dollars, federal funding ceased its growth at the end of the 1980s, just about the time Rojstaczer joined Duke University. Rojstaczer experienced another kind of downsizing, that of standards and expectations. Dual-track departments consist of one track that continues a traditional major and all its requirements, while the second track waters down the degree requirements. One instance of a second-track major would be classical studies, where students don't have to know Latin or Greek, as they would in the traditional classics major, but instead read the classics in translation. Rojstaczer talks about environmental studies programs, in which students don't have to know calculus, physics and chemistry in order to earn a degree.