The Fall Quarter Has Begun At The University Of Denver

Classes at the University of Denver began last Tuesday, the day after Labor Day. Last year, I stopped by the DU Bookstore - where I worked for almost 30 years - on the first day of classes to see what it was like these days and was shocked to find only 2 employees at the cash registers and maybe 3 customers on the sales floor. Back in 2012, the last time I ever worked the first day of fall classes, the bookstore was jampacked with students. We had 8 cash registers going the entire day, and lines went halfway to the back wall. I took the photograph on the left yesterday morning, the second week of school, and the scene was more or less the same as last year. And how did this business change so much in 15 years? As far as I can tell, most students now get their textbooks via what is called a "course-by-course" access program, where the bookstore, campus, and publishers sign an agreement to provide textbooks on or before the first day of classes, and the materials are delivered digitally via a "campus learning management system." No need for bookstores to hire extra help to receive physical textbooks or temporary cashiers to ring up all those sales. And so, yesterday there were just two employees to ring up a handful of sales. An entire industry turned upside down, just like daily newspapers, network television, monthly or weekly magazines, and countless others, thanks to this new digital age.

Except for the new student center that replaced the old one on the north side of the Driscoll Center, the new freshman dorm (which the university insists on calling student housing), and a new science building on the south side of campus, everything looks pretty much the same at DU, as does the walk from the Driscoll Center back to my condo. And as usual, I passed by students heading to lunch or their next class, as seen in the photograph on the right. Of course, there are far fewer of them these days, thanks to the shrinking pool of college age students, fewer high school graduates moving on to college, and smaller numbers of international students, thanks to Trump administration policies. DU's administration, which had to deal with a $30 million budget shortfall last fiscal year, has combined divisions and departments and laid off faculty and staff to deal with this new reality. Time will tell if it is enough. Hopefully it is. After all, I live across the street from DU. God knows what would replace it if it went away. A maximum-security prison, an AI data center, the new home of a strange and mysterious religious cult? It just boggles the mind.