Chris,
 
The problem is not really that people don't want to help any more or host
lists of  academic interest  for free,  but that  many people  have found
themselves  in just  about the  same situation  as A&M  regarding traffic
volumes. LISTSERV  traffic has increased  by 25% from  Jan 15 to  Feb 15!
This kind  of increase can create  problems very quickly if  you're doing
your deliveries on a mainframe  where upgrades cost hundreds of thousands
of dollars. While  many sites are looking very  seriously into offloading
these deliveries to a unix machine, not all have an available unix server
*today*. Buying a machine at this time  of the budget year is not an easy
task, and on  top of that you have  to account for the usual  2 months of
administrative delays, and then the vendor has to deliver the machine, it
has to  be installed  and configured, etc.  For many  universities, we're
talking 3-4 months, whereas the users  are clamouring now :-) I think the
trend will reverse  once people implement lists in a  more cost effective
manner.
 
  Eric