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Management takes credit, never blame

I have lived in Southwest Colorado for sneaking up on 40 years now, and it just dawned on me that the ski area and the college, in addition to being defining industries of our community, have an awful lot in common. Whenever skier visits or college enrollment are up, it’s always the brilliant strategies of their respective managements that get credit. When skier visits or college enrollment are down, it’s the weather or the number of high school graduates (or some other factors beyond management’s control) that are to blame. Numbers up: management. Numbers down: factors beyond their control. Is it possible that last year’s largest graduating class in college history had something to do with the deliberate, planned emergence of Fort Lewis College as an option different by design from other small state colleges in Colorado, or that the recent drop in enrollment reflects choices made by the college that threaten to eliminate those differences? I don’t imagine many in management at either institution will ever suggest that declines are caused by anything other than the weather, fluctuations in sunspot activity and possibly El Niño – certainly not any policy decisions they have made.

Steve Meyers

Durango



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