>practice due to rules, politics, and institutional inertia.
Isn't that the responsibility of the dean to fix? I think a lot of us have no idea how this actually works, but do understand the difference between impossible and hard. This seems more like it's on the hard side than impossible.
A dean is a mid-level manager in an organization, where effective power is widely diffused.
Many things are possible in the same sense as rewriting the US constitution. The mechanism for it exists, but using it in practice would require widespread agreement on the specifics. When there are many people making independent decisions, it's best to see the situation in statistical terms. Outcomes that are too many standard deviations away from the expected are effectively impossible.
Isn't that the responsibility of the dean to fix? I think a lot of us have no idea how this actually works, but do understand the difference between impossible and hard. This seems more like it's on the hard side than impossible.