On the surface, Brandeis seems like it's in pretty good shape, because on the surface it is. A visitor taking a quick look here these past few weeks would have seen many exciting marks of a stable and flourishing school-progress on construction, stimulating and controversial lectures and discussions, the approval of eight seemingly exciting Justice Brandeis Semester programs, big-name concerts like Ben Folds and (even bigger-name) dances like Pachanga. Digging only slightly beneath the surface, however, the picture is far less cheerful: the enormous budget deficit, a student population forced to increase beyond the school's capacity, staff layoffs and a hiring freeze leading to crowded classes, unfunded sports teams and slashed scholarships. For the sake of the school, anybody with any administrative power here should be thinking big for ways to fix our financial woes-and that's exactly what they're doing. The Bold Ideas Group, which held its first meeting Nov. 16, seeks means of significant revenue, ostensibly intended to fix the school's underfunded and slowly deteriorating interior. From the description on the Brandeis Web site, BIG resembles a think tank comprised of faculty and administration and is also reaching out to the general Brandeis community for submission of ideas. According to an article in last week's Justice, the types of initiatives that BIG intends to formulate are "on the scale of the Rabb School for Continuing Studies [which now] earns about $2 million a year." Exciting stuff, right? In the article, Provost Marty Krauss says that the criteria for projects that BIG will be devoting its energies to is "a positive return within three years of initiation and yield a steady-state positive net return of at least $2 million. . There might be things we could do that might bring $100,000 or $200,000 more into the University; we're really looking for something bigger."

Projects bringing millions of dollars to the school within three years? Despite its excessively corny name, the big thinking that BIG is about seems to be exactly what the University needs. The group is comprised of all-star members of the Brandeis community, many of whom seem to be a perfect fit for the job. Dean of the International Business School Bruce Magid's résumé is a perfect blend of business and academia. Daniel Terris, the director of the International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life, started the division of Graduate Professional Studies at the Rabb School, on which Krauss suggests BIG should model its future projects.

This sounds like a rare recipe for success, but its timing is quite strange. Although the University is in dire need of a big fix today, our situation was equally urgent last year. In last week's Justice, "Krauss said that BIG is a continuation of a process begun in the fall of 2008, which looked at new, potentially profitable academic options for the University. These activities were put on hold during the rising financial crisis, but the BIG committee is a reawakening of that initial effort." Put on hold during the rising financial crisis? Wouldn't a rising financial crisis call for even more robust and immediate BIG thinking? Perhaps the administration thought that its exploration for new initiatives could be replaced by selling several pieces of art from the Rose Art Museum. Maybe the administration was too busy cleaning up the ensuing mess to think BIG.

Speculation aside, the fact that it took over a year for this group to re-emerge serves as a reminder of the slow and contemplative nature of academia. Academics are all about thought and deliberation-which is exactly what BIG is looking for-but the pace of their deliberation makes me hesitant to feel too comfortable that the group will figure out a way to shrink or close our budget gap anytime soon. Life slightly beneath the surface here still looks and feels like life at a prestigious, thriving university. The harsh realty, however, is that if trajectories don't change-shrinking faculty, free-falling endowment, growing student body, stagnant residential space-even the biggest of BIG ideas won't be able to save us.