Well, on the plus side universities are about the perfect situation for, uh, alternative living situations. They have bathrooms and showers in abundance, cafete

Well, on the plus side universities are about the perfect situation for, uh, alternative living situations. They have bathrooms and showers in abundance, cafeterias, and washer/dryers. Universities get away with the minimum wage labor because the living experience of universities is basically the only successful mass communal living experience that doesn't look like a prison (like nursing homes, homeless shelters, military barracks, etc) and is arguably more enjoyable to be in than "real life" with apartments, commutes, office jobs, etc. And despite the fact you typically are living at arguably a sub-poverty line existence, you are either a "professor", "doctoral candidate", or at least "university student" all of which carry substantial prestige over what is basically minimum wage (or sub minimum wage) labor. Arguably this was a perfectly fine thing for ...centuries? But since the ludicrous explosion in tuition and the rise of various management vampires siphoning off that money, it has become decidedly exploitative, to the point it is beginning to destroy the value, prestige, and appeal of the institutions as a whole. I keep thinking every 10 years there will be a massive correction, but they are still holding firm to the class paranoia of the upper middle classes and the big lie of upward mobility to the middle and lower classes. And of course an entire generation of people that wouldn't normally have gone to college going there, getting drunk and a rubberstamp degree, and then defending the "value" (really a sunk cost) of that by demanding any new hires also have the same rubberstamp/sunk cost.