[kevhito]

> no one really cares

Maybe. Or maybe they care and simply have a different perspective on what is the best approach. Or maybe they have different priorities. Optimizing for one variable (e.g. making one specific course awesome) at the expense of all others (hedging against future enrollment trends, pleasing the board of directors & alumni, limited faculty resources, ....) is simply not how universities work.

So I agree with you, somewhat, in some circumstances. In the science side of thing, maybe. But we're also talking about the college's dog policy here. The author seems to think it is completely obvious that he should be free to bring his dog to his campus lab, and shows no awareness that there may be good reasons there is a no dog policy. Maybe there are students with allergies? Or maybe UB has been sued for this in the past? Or maybe its a state law? I don't know.

So reading your comment carefully, it isn't actually obvious if you think it was the author's colleagues who had the big egos and won't listen to criticism, or the author himself.

[munin]

At my university, I've asked about educational priorities only to be told, by senior professors, "making this class better or worse won't help anyone's career." This is probably what you mean by "having different priorities."