i guess we have different ideas on what the "long term institutional objectives" of the university of michigan are.
this is not meant in any way as a criticism of you or anyone else working to educate students at michigan. however, when i see tuition rates increasing multiple folds, when i see universities substitute foreign students for in state students because they pay more, when i see schools increasing class sizes and decreasing professors, increasing the use of cheap grad students or non-tenured faculty and paying them a pittance, increasing the size of the administrative bloat at the university with provost after meaningless provost, and sitting on billion dollar endowments that they use for junkets and new administration buildings and fancy athletic complexes, i find it hard to believe that the actual "mission" of the university of michigan is anything other than to make money for the university and the bureaucrats who run it.
in that respect, having "student" employees who play football to advertise the university and make its big money alumni happy and donating more into the machine that is the "university of michigan", this new world fits right in.
"the bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy." that's the university system right now.