All The News That is Fit To Print at the University at Amherst
Richard P. Leader reporting

Tier 1 or Bust

AMHERST, NY (CC)- Top administrators at the University of Amherst (UA) are once again trying to placate student fear and dismay concerning the institution's recent drop in rankings. Due to fuzzy logic and an informal poll between disgruntled alumni, UA slid from a Tier 2 school down to a Tier 3 school in U.S. News and World Report's annual catalogue. Students are being advised to remain calm and wait patiently for the oxygen masks to drop down from the ceiling and imagine that their pain is a "white ball of healing light."

Though many UA students were at least initially shocked and appalled by their school's recent drop in rankings, others such as Alan Singleton, a junior Communications major, are espousing a different take on the situation. "U.S. News is just trying to sell magazines," he explained, "and they'll say anything they want--they just make shit up to sell copies. That's why they come out with new rankings every year, you know, like how every year there's a new Madden football game for PlayStation. They never get it right either. Emmitt Smith has had the same rating for like ten years now--there's no way his "speed" is still a "96". And don't get me started on Ricky Williams, there's no way his "break tackle" is better than Edgerrin James. And Brad Johnson, no way, don't even get me started..."

UA Provost, Elizabeth D. Caputi, penned a letter to the UA student newspaper, The Spektrum, decrying U.S. News and World Report's poor methodology and general journalistic ineptitillity, declaring, "A raven isn't like a writing desk and a university isn't like a football team--you can't just throw millions and millions of dollars at its problems and expect them to go away."

Caputi alluded to the issue of a possible rankings improvement at her address to the College of Arts and Sciences, as well as at University Convocation. In both speeches, Caputi gave a detailed account of her plan to make UA a premier research facility by systematically driving off every last undergrad from New York State except for a more selective "farm" of transfer and honors students to use for a tuition and tax subsidy--otherwise known as cash crops. This change would allow for a larger number of Masters students and faculty from abroad, whom she described as "people treasures."

The Spektrum records her as referring to her plan as a "great leap forward," a concept first pioneered by a man whom we all know and love, Chairman Mao. While following in the footsteps of the communist strongman, Caputi's Great Leap Forward will be firmly grounded in the realm of capitalism.

"You see," says a prominent UA official wishing to remain anonymous, "It's called 'trickle down education.' They take your money, invest it in smarty-pants grad students who actually might have a chance of becoming brilliant professors some day--if they don't starve to death in the mean time. It's like going to the track. Most undergrads are too young to have heard of 'Reaganomics' so they aren't worried about taking it up the pooper for the greater good of California beach-front property owners."

"Sure, Caputi's heart is in the right place, but the fact of the matter is, when you think 'people treasures,' you don't expect them to come from a Tier 3 school! Hell, it's getting to the point where you have to go to a Tier 2 school just to drive a Bluebird bus around campus."

"Our hiring decisions reflect that too," he continued, "outside of medicine and all that scientific stuff, you don't see many professors around here that received their terminal degree from this institution. The situation in the humanities is even worse--only about two percent of the faculty can claim this school as their alma mater, and they aren't even real professors, just 'assistant to assistant adjunct associate professors' or something. Poor bastards."