1. Covid was hard on education from kindergarten through college. Systems and processes that were already stressed to the max became overloaded and everyone was asked to do more and sometimes take a pay cut or have reduced benefits while doing so.
2. Society stopped valuing education as much. While once educators traded lower pay for the prestige of being a professor they can’t really say it is a worthy trade anymore as a vocal minority do not value education at all.
3. Faculty no longer run colleges/ universities. Once faculty ran everything, but as regulations have tightened and colleges started getting sued for any number of things professional administrators started being required because the jobs got bigger. In theory this has created less work for faculty, but they now feel disconnected and impotent.