RE: The (long) future of paleontology

["Richard W. Travsky" <rtravsky@uwyo.edu>]

On Tue, 17 Jan 2006 Ken.Carpenter@dmns.org wrote:
> What Phil wrote is only partially true. I was at a university that made 
> the transition between a loosely held time limit and a rigid, official 
> one. The change was because of a growing number of "professional 
> students", meaning that they got so comfortable being students that the 
> thought of finishing and having to look for a job (hence "grow-up") was 
> difficult for them. I know of at least one graduate student at the U. of 
> California Berkeley who had already been a graduate student for 20 years 
> when I met the person in the late 1970s. The rigid deadlines became a 
> way of forcing students to finish something they started and to move on 
> in life. Ken

I'm reminded of the Roger Zelazny story about the fellow at college whose
(deceased) father left him access to the inheritance so long as he was in 
college - so he stopped one credit short of every program at the 
university...