How a University Demonstrates Priorities

Each day I enter my campus, on my way to a brutally overcrowded College of Education ("number one ranked” we’re always proud to say) which just completed a building addition providing less than half the additional space the university determined we needed last year, I pass the massive new expansion of the football stadium (completed two years ago) and the current massive expansion of the “Football Administration Building” that shares a super-block (of what were once intramural fields) with the Football Practice Building and the Athletic Tutoring Center.

Yes, they are funded by alumni donations. Yes, I’m certain, being a Big Ten school has its benefits. But I also know that MSU has cut non-revenue sports in the past decade. That it cannot find donors to help upgrade the Soccer-Lacrosse-Field Hockey-baseball-softball fields. That it charges high fees for student use of their own fitness center — indicating the football/basketball revenue really doesn’t even quite stretch that far within Athletics itself.

And more importantly, every undergrad learns that what facilities seem most important to the university’s administration. Every student understands that while research projects share tiny spaces, and classroom furniture has often not been replaced in forty years, the Men’s and Women’s basketball teams have entirely separate practice gyms and office facilities in a massive new arena. No sharing there. No old furniture there.

I’m not offering a solution. America is America, and universities spend billions on marketing, and billions on spectator sport (as part of marketing) and, at the same time, can only afford a 43% full-time faculty while raising student costs far faster than inflation every year. So perhaps universities in America might want to really investigate the overall success of their marketing schemes (including Athletics). I won’t suggest that they worry about how they demonstrate priorities to their students, because I really don’t think that they care.

Ira Socol, Michigan State University, at 8:10 am EST on November 21, 2007

Inconvenient fact

” .. But I also know that MSU has cut non-revenue sports ..”

http://ctlr.msu.edu/download/fa/financialstatements/OFI20052006.pdf

Once again — what NCAA sports actually do NOT lose money?

That is, pay for the majority of NCAA athletic programs (e.g., golf, swimming?) That 20% of MSU students *voluntarily* buy tickets to?

If unhappy with football and basketball — why not go somewhere else? And create an educational Nirvana that puts displaces ESPN on TV? Looking forward to that happening.

B.J., at 11:50 am EST on November 21, 2007

One thing that the article doesn’t mention is that the President and the Board of Governors at Rutgers have done their utmost to make and keep this a secret project. The fact that it was proceeding was only revealed in August, when plans were leaked to local newspapers. We, the students at Rutgers, have been denied any opportunity to view the plans, to examine the cost projections (it amuses me that the spokesman for the administration tells us that “other new revenue-generating opportunities” will fund this — is this code for “fee increases"?), or to even learn the full extent of the proposed expansion.

This is after one near-sellout season in 15 years of half-filled home games. Hardly prudent planning from a broke university with a deferred maintenance bill of $500 million...

Adrian Barr, at 11:55 am EST on November 21, 2007

Not sure of BJ’s point

But in my mind athletics do have some value in education. I’m just not sure that sports which exist primarily as spectator sports have that value. I have no problem, for example, sitting on the grass in Dublin watching Trinity College athletes play rugby. It is fun to see, and the students involved are having a great time. There are, of course, neither bleachers nor any other “fan amenities.” Likewise, I enjoy sitting out at MSU’s Old College Field watching those “non-revenue” sports, or just seeing intramural sports. I’m just not sure that it is “the best use” of the administration’s time and/or the university’s resources to invest massively in eight Saturday’s of heavy drinking for students and alumni. Or to have the highest paid person on campus be a coach, or to provide an “NBA-quality” experience for basketball fans.

If all else on campus was “just right” — then, it might be a luxury you’d choose. But if not, then yes, I do believe that it sends the wrong messages. But then, almost every American school sends these same messages. So perhaps it is simply the way it is.

Ira Socol, Michigan State University, at 1:30 pm EST on November 21, 2007

Has the Rutgers University deferred maintenance backlog of $500 million been determined by a comprehensive study or is it a back of the envelope estimate?

D R, at 2:40 pm EST on November 21, 2007

Play me and pay me

Why couldn’t universities shed the pretense of the athlete disguised as a student by actually hiring the athletes instead, and releasing them from their student “obligations"? Lots of kinds of people work at institutions of higher education — some teach philosophy, some cook in the caf; why couldn’t some play basketball for a salary? Granted, professionalizing the ballplayers won’t stanch the fan frenzy besetting so many campuses, but at least those will be employees, not faux students, being cheered.

Abbott Katz, at 1:35 pm EST on November 22, 2007

The Rutgers 1000: A Profile in Academic Courage

Doug Lederman’s account of the reconstitution of the Rutgers 1000, a group of Rutger’s students, faculty and alumni that aim to stop university administrators from emphasizing football over academics, tells a story of a rare display of campus courage in the face of daunting odds. It brought to mind this cogent statement by Princeton Professor Stanley Katz:

“The system of higher education is out of control. In their own way, the Ivies are just as badly impacted as the Big Twelve. Even well intended university reformist presidents have not been able to stop the trend to financial aggrandizement. Education is too important to be left to anyone other than educators. So faculty must rise up to demand reform of intercollegiate athletics, to reject the hypocrisy of the notion of “student-athletes,” and to assert the primacy of undergraduate education. This is a battle we cannot afford to lose."[1]

In a 2001 essay Professor Dowling states that: “.... there is substantial agreement, with a majority of critics arguing that the solution (to the problems in college sports) is to make athletics in Division IA of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) openly professional — the school operates the franchise, the stadium is sold to shareholders, the players are hired on the same terms as those in the NBA or NFL, and the charade of trying to pass them off as “student athletes” is quietly put to rest.[2]

It is of interest to note that contrary to claims by the NCAA and its member institutions, intercollegiate athletics is already professionalized. Michigan State University College of Law Professors Robert and Amy McCormick argue in a Washington Law Review article that grant-in-aid athletes in revenue-generating sports at NCAA Division I institutions should not be viewed as “student-athletes” as the NCAA asserts, but should, instead, be considered “employees” under the National Labor Relations Act.[3]

Nonetheless, unless forced by the government, the NCAA and its member institutions would never agree to the solution espoused by the majority of critics. Why? It would be tantamount to confessing to their ’student-athlete’ ruse — removing the cloak of deceit and deception that allows their fans to fill game seats as they cling to the illusion that big-time college athletes are actually part of their school’s serious academic life. This confession would certainly amount to an outright forfeiture of their tax-exempt status and all of its related benefits for them as well as the donors to their athletic programs — making this ‘solution’ a sure nonstarter.

Therefore, the formidable task of getting priorities right at Rutgers, and other schools supporting big-time football and men’s basketball programs, must be taken on by others. Reform-minded faculty members in the Rutgers 1000 will likely feel the really heavy weight of their reform lances — risking burnout when they face the defensive efforts of those opposing reform. First and foremost are the foxes in the university’s administration that are intent on guarding their financial henhouse.

Generally speaking, it is next to impossible for faculty to engage in reform efforts but there are exceptions, such as Professor Dowling and his colleagues, that help keep the reform flame burning. The related work is really not the faculty members “day job” — they were certainly not hired to worry about college sports. Also, the faculty will have to cope with their sports-crazed colleagues, alumni, boosters and other avid sports fans that are quick to forgive and forget popular athletes and coaches accused of serious crimes but will likely resent any intrusion into their entertainment venue.

Furthermore, most faculty members are likely too busy — facing a ‘time-crunch’ problem as they struggle just to keep up with their day jobs. A serious time commitment to reform efforts would be unimaginable for most faculty members. The problem points to the question of faculty overload that was not considered at the October 15, 2007, Knight Commission Faculty Summit.[4]

On the other hand, college sports is the day job for the, coaches and their staffs, athletic directors and administrators, NCAA officials and staffers, as well as a wide variety of derivative business employees who make their living in this domain. Also to be considered are governors as well as state and federal legislators eager to please rather than displease their devout-sports-fan constituents.[5] Taken together, these folks comprise a large cohort of the potentially endangered species of foxes. These defenders have much to lose if their “empires” are downsized, while those working for change realize little more than the psychic income associated with doing the “right thing” at great costs in terms of personal time, vilification and the potential for retribution among other tribulations.[6]

Here’s a few general, context-setting bullet points that relate to the fight by the Rutgers 1000 and others to reclaim academic primacy at their university:

o America’s future position as a global economic and academic leader is compromised by its obsessive sport’s culture. College sports are not only embedded in our national culture, but they seem to be hard-wired into our genetic structure as well – stemming from our prehistoric zest for the chase and kill as well as for today’s winning of the “games” and the “prize.” This cultural problem not only distracts the attention of college and university officials from the burning issues of our time, but also lies at the root of the decline toward the total prostitution of their colleges and universities in a seeming desperate quest for more money, power, and prestige.

o Unbounded hypocrisy undermines the credibility of these school officials as they preside over their segment of a seeming race to the bottom of academic standards and the dumbing down of America’s K-Undergraduate education infrastructure.[7] Apparently these officials are either unwilling or unable to work seriously to restore academic primacy and integrity to their institutions and to the whole of higher education.

o In many, if not most, instances, college athletes’ participate in an alternative educational experience that is not part of the school’s serious academic life, but rather a customized pseudo-academic experience engineered by academic support center staff members who work at the behest of the school’s athletic department to maintain the eligibility of the school’s athletes.

o The college sports entertainment business continues to exploit college athletes, provide weak rules enforcement, show a lack of concern with regard to violence by college athletes and the connection of violence to the use of performance enhancing drugs, while it limits access to higher education by real students and shrouds its conduct in a veil of secrecy – taking inappropriate, if not illegitimate, refuge in the privacy provisions of the Buckley Amendment to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).

o The college sports entertainment business has been under congressional scrutiny. On Oct. 2, 2006, former Rep. Bill Thomas (R-CA), the past Chairman of the House Committee on Ways & Means, initiated inquiries into the tax-exempt business of college sports by sending NCAA President Myles Brand a sharply-worded letter – asking why the NCAA and its member institutions should maintain the tax-exempt status of their sports programs. The Thomas letter triggered a powerful issue-amplifying column by nationally syndicated columnist George Will as well as a host of supporting editorials and columns in the national media that continue to this day.

o Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the former Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and now its Ranking Minority Member, has taken up the cause. The primary aim of his effort is to have taxpayer subsidies for college athletics programs benefit the public at large. A spinoff benefit would be to obtain a significant increase in the level of transparency and accountability at the NCAA.— helping to minimize academic corruption that enables institutions of higher education to field competitive teams so that they can garner financial, PR, and other rewards associated with college sports.[8]

o The recent four-part PBS Nightly Business Report (NBR) on “The ‘business’ of college football” touted the upside ‘business’ benefits associated with college football — overlooking significant downside academic problems. Unwittingly, the series carried the hallmarks of an NCAA promotion piece.[9] Its emphasis on benefits came across as a response to congressional scrutiny of the NCAA and the numerous articles in the national media that suggest that now is the time for the Congress to do something about the hypocrisy and pervasive fraud in big-time college sports that tends to warp the academic mission of America’s colleges and universities.

o A relevant transcript excerpt involving Jeff Yastine, a Nightly Business Report Correspondent, and Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL), the former chair and now Ranking Member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection:YASTINE: College football — It’s supposed to be about what happens on the field. But these days, it`s also about what happens in the halls of Congress where the topic of coaches` salaries — like the reported $4 million a year Nick Saban will make at the University of Alabama — is coming under scrutiny. Lawmakers like Cliff Stearns of Florida say you won`t see legislation, but congressional hearings on the subject are a possibility.

STEARNS: Here we are in 2007, we`re paying coaches $2.5 million plus endorsements plus TV programs and things like that. What`s it going to be in 10 years? And the money that is so prodigious — what effect is that going to have on the motivation of the university? Is it a spiraling competitive race, almost like an arms race with these universities?

o The last thing the NCAA, the Knight Commission, and school officials, want to experience is a congressional hearing on transparency and accountability aimed at making the college sports business prove that it deserves its tax-exempt status. Why? Because such a hearing would likely expose institutional misbehavior via disclosure of the grades of athletes, the courses they take, and the faculty who teach the courses.

o It is institutional misbehavior that enables the NCAA to continue its ‘student-athlete’ ruse – a fraud perpetrated on American taxpayers. To be sure, a congressional hearing would be fought aggressively by the NCAA and its member institutions since protecting the tax-exempt revenues of their sports entertainment businesses is in their vital interest. Not only that, but taking on the NCAA would require not only great political courage, but also a strong bipartisan effort — not likely in the near future when 2008 election politics are muddying the waters. Although it is to be expected that Senator Grassley’s strong effort to have the NCAA justify its tax-exempt status will see tough sledding in the near term, there is reason for cautious optimism that, over time, the Congress will act responsibly.

o In the end, without federal intervention, the corruption in big-time college sports will only grow worse as the schools adopt counter measures to foil or circumvent the NCAA’s pathetically weak reform and enforcement measures and as the Knight Commission continues to work with the NCAA to avoid close congressional scrutiny – providing it with cover while both the Commission and the NCAA dance far from the edges of serious reform.

NOTES

1. This quote is an excerpt from Professor Katz’s commentary on “RECLAIMING ACADEMIC PRIMACY IN HIGHER EDUCATION, http://thedrakegroup.org/Splitt_Reclaiming_Academic_Primacy.pdf

2. Dowling, William C., “College Sports: Faut-il légaliser la prostitution?,” Academic Questions, 2001, www.rci.rutgers.edu/~wcd/prostitu.htm.

3. McCormick, Robert A. and Amy C., “The Myth of the Student-Athlete: The College Athlete as Employee,” Washington Law Review, Vol. 81, pp. 71-157, 2006, Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=893059

4. Splitt, Frank G., “On the Faculty Role in College Sports Oversight”

http://thedrakegroup.org/Splitt_F...Role_in_College_Sports_Oversight.pdf,“An Afterword,” http://thedrakegroup.org/Splitt_Faculty_Role_Afterword.pdf

5. As an example of the pressure on elected government officials, consider this: After being lobbied by University of Wisconsin Athletic Director Barry Alvarez, an Assembly committee recently voted, 11-0, to exempt payments for seat licenses, sold by the UW for football and men’s basketball, necessary to gain preferential seating at college sporting events. No member of the Wisconsin Legislature would risk voting for a tax on their UW Badgers and expect to long remain in office — no matter how justified the tax. That’s just how it is in football-loving Wisconsin that is actually low key relative to some of our Southern states where football is either on par with, or, handily trumps religious fervor. Countless examples exist in other states where football and basketball heroes, both coaches and players, overshadow Nobel Laureates and other award-winning scientists and engineers.

6. To get a sense of “vilification and the potential for retribution"see Dowling’s discussion of Linda Bensel-Meyers’ experience at the University of Tennessee in Confessions of a Spoilsport, pp. 113-117, and

“A Statement on Academic Retaliation,”http://thedrakegroup.org/Splitt_Statement_on_Academic_Retaliation.pdf

7. This is roughly akin to America’s neglect of its physical infrastructure from roads and bridges to power grids. In Confessions of a Spoilsport, Dowling addresses academic deterioration in higher education. For K-12, here’s an instructive scenario from Illinois, reported by Emily Krone in her Nov. 25, 2007, Daily Herald article “Chapter 10: Only 1 in 5 graduates college ready.” Based on a review of ACT College Readiness reports from 36 nearby high school districts, it was found that just 21 percent of seniors leave high school ready for college or the workplace. One administrator said their graduates would be ready for college if they entered high school at grade level and they would be at that level if they came into first grade with requisite level

8. For more on congressional scrutiny of the NCAA, see “Reclaiming Academic Primacy in Higher Education: The Revised IRS Form 990 Can Accelerate the Process,” http://www.thedrakegroup.org/Splitt_Reclaiming_Academic_Primacy_IRS.pdf

9. Transcripts for the PBS series, “The Business of College Football,” are posted at URL http://www.pbs.org/nbr/site/features/special/college-football_home/

Frank G. Splitt, Member at The Drake Group, at 6:05 pm EST on November 25, 2007

Atheletes who go on to higher careers

Dave, personal accounts do not good evidence make. I could give you an equal number of football players who grew up to be losers and criminals.

But by definition, scholarships to football players do show a disregard towards education. Unlike other scholarships, these are not dependent on academic ability, but rather sports prowess alone. If we assume intelligence and football abilities are two independent variables, than for a given level of football acuity, we expect a Gaussian distribution of IQ. True those on one side are above average, but on the other side of the curve are players who only gained admission through football prowess. And those displace better students that could have been admitted.

Elon Weintraub, at 5:35 pm EST on November 26, 2007