As we start the New Year, Florida State University is in the headlines for two reasons. The first is that on New Year’s Day, in the Gator Bowl, FSU beat West Virginia. It was the final game of our coach, Bobby Bowden. The lead headline in the New York Times Sports Section is “Bowden Goes Out on Top of Shoulders.” The magazine Science also has news about FSU. “Recession Hits Some Sciences Hard at Florida State University.” We have just fired 20 tenured faculty and another 15 tenure-track faculty. And don’t think that these were just second-raters or indeed presume that any of them were. Included was Dean Falk, one of today’s leading paleoanthropologists and, among other things, the expert on the brain of Homo floresiensis (the hobbit). She got a pink slip on her 65th birthday. (Disclosure: Dean is a good friend. In this post I am absolutely not making a judgment about whether, given the firings, she was legitimately included or not. If you read the Science article, you will see that decisions were made on the judged vulnerability of departments, and she is a member of one such department, anthropology.)
I don’t know which item of news depresses me the more. At the best of times (and God knows when those are), I look upon collegiate sports in the USA, football and basketball particularly, as deeply corrupting. At FSU we are just emerging from a major scandal about football players taking courses that were rigged. Bowden lost some of the many victories with which he is credited. (Again: In this post I am making absolutely no judgments about who was responsible. These issues are still being contested.)
But of course the actual dishonesty is just a tip of the iceberg. Frankly, what any of this has to do with education beats me. I do know that there are aspects that I — and I of all people am not Mr. Politically Correct — find deeply offensive. Start with the Red Indian (and I use that term advisedly) who starts each game by plunging a burning spear into the ground and go on with the “chop” that the fans give throughout the game. Add in the drinking — Mike’s Beer Barn supposedly sells more kegs than any other outlet in the USA — and don’t forget, as is becoming all too certain, the damage we are doing to young men’s brains in the name of entertainment.
What really worries me is the obscene amount of money that is involved. That a football coach should make four or more times the money that our (FSU) president makes speaks for itself. Jimbo Fisher, the new coach, is getting $9-million over the next five years, more if his team wins. And don’t tell me that football pays for itself. If it does, it does so only because it has the FSU name and support of the boosters and others. And who might I ask paid for the massive stadium that is used six times a year? I don’t notice women’s intramural soccer playing there under floodlights on Thursday evenings.
The flip side to all of this is the other story. Now, let me make it very clear that there is no one better than I am running down and ridiculing university administrations. It was only at the last moment, in my last post on my love of American movies, that when talking of the baddie in Shane, I substituted for the thought that had he not been killed in a hail of lead he would undoubtedly have had a grand career in the higher levels of the American banking system, the alternative thought that had he not been killed he would undoubtedly have had a grand career in the higher levels of university administration. But I have to say that in the 10 years that I have been at FSU, I have developed a deep respect for the leading academic administrators at FSU.
Above all others, our provost Larry Abele has worked day and night to raise the level of scholarship at the institution and to improve the quality of teaching and much more. He is not altogether a nice man. He is a good man. The same is true of others. Joe Travis, the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, for instance, is much involved in “FSU Teach.” The State of Florida is desperate for more and better qualified, school science teachers. Travis is leading an initiative to take science education from the College of Education, to put it in the College of Arts and Sciences, and to make sure that every new teacher has a full degree in a real science. (More disclosure: Joe is a close friend, we team teach together, and co-edited Evolution: The First Four Billion Years, recently published by Harvard University Press.)
And so what is their reward? I really think that politicians in Florida despise higher education. We have no income tax, we have all sorts of other fiddles like homesteading — Homesteading! I fully expect John Wayne to come riding over the horizon and to stop by for a mess of beans cooked by Walter Brennan — and we have the lowest fees of any state system. Not only do these Philistines fight tooth and nail against any increase in tuition, but, when it comes to cuts, first and foremost it is the university system in their sights. The $380-million state budget has been cut by $82-million in the last three years, and of this $55-million was cut this year.
Has our administration always made the right decisions? Of course not! Other Florida universities are using Obama funds to pay the bills right now, postponing draconian cuts and hoping that they will not be needed. Time will tell who is right. I am certainly not betting against the FSU administrators. But the point I am making holds either way. On one side of the campus, we have top-quality educators trying desperately to do the right thing in the face of massive financial cuts. On the other side of the campus, we have people awash in big bucks, part of an enterprise that strikes me as less than worthy in its own right and simply not the sort of thing that should be so deeply embedded in an institution whose goal is scholarship and the education of our brightest young people.
In a couple of hundred years, when the new Gibbon comes to write the Decline and Fall of the American Empire, I predict that a chapter will be given over to Joe Lieberman and his spiteful behavior over the Health Bill. A whole volume will be given over to Florida State University.
14 Responses to Why I Am Weeping for Florida State University
pittlaw - January 4, 2010 at 10:21 am
This is all too true of too many universities. Just vary the details slightly and you could easily substitute the name of probably 50 or 100 other schools.
leegc - January 4, 2010 at 10:38 am
This not just a problem at FSU. It is happening at every college or university across the nation. Look at what coaches are being paid to stay or leave an institution across the nation. I too, believe that the salaries of coaches is getting out of hand. There is too much emphasis being put on winning at all cost. However, an institution needs to have an athletic program that can generate enough revenue to fund all of the other non-revenue generating athletic programs. As we all know there are a lot of people who choose to attend a certain institution based on the athletics instead of the academics. Sad to say but it is true. As for the Florida Legislature not thinking very highly of higher education, that is not limited to just Florida. It is happening in every state. For example the institution where I am located has been cut from 42% funding in 2000 to under 8% this year by our state legislature. It appears no one is thinking that higher education is important anymore. While 85% of the jobs require some post secondary education. Higher education is needed now more than ever to help people qualify for those jobs. These cuts in funding is forcing more institutions to raise their tuition to meet their operational costs. The negative effect of this is that it will start limiting access to higher education. Thus limiting citizen’s ablity to qualify for the better paying jobs. Which would increase the tax revenues for the states. My question is “When will the state and federal legislatures wake up and put the money into higher educaton?”
11261897 - January 4, 2010 at 11:04 am
The coach at my institution, a private university whose team has national rankings and a minor bowl game this go-around, just got a raise to $2.3 million.That’s a sum larger than the entire budget of the English department, which struggles yearly to operate a doctoral program on top of its campus-wide service and major-related courses.
jeffgray - January 4, 2010 at 11:57 am
Many good points made in the original piece, which are tough to argue with. That said, beyond the major high profile culprits which are noted, it seems there are other student-athletes, coaches and teams who may not be part of the same culture of excess, and perhaps should not be broadly categorized under the same umbrella. Many of these are likely serious about academic pursuits as well as athletic competition, and for some it may have been their athletic involvement that made it possible or even desirable for them to advance their education. While this may not be the “right” reason to go to college, it may be a hook that is necessary for some at a particular point in their development, with worthwhile outcomes in the long run for them. It seems there could be some value added dimensions associated with the existence of athletic programs and teams, beyond the high profile marketing and expenses associated with some; personal, developmental, community and even educational value that is commonly associated with out of class activities. It’s part of the experience for many, and for some these activities may be the primary hook that will result in an advanced education and a college degree, which seems to be a worthwile outcome, for them and for society, if managed properly. The question it seems is one of balance, degree of emphasis and at what cost, and this may be where some of the programs cross the line.
cwinton - January 4, 2010 at 12:11 pm
I grew up in an academic household and directly witnessed the improvements in public institutions that occurred following Sputnik in 1957, when it became apparent to the body politic that in the aftermath of WWII our public higher education institutions were sorely stressed by years of poor funding and near poverty wage levels for faculty. Despite the evident success our society achieved as a direct result of the investments made in higher education following the Sputnik event, I suspect there remains a widely held societal view as reflected in legislative behavior that higher education is largely something associated with wealth and privilege. I also think our collegiate leaders, perhaps unwisely, operate under the mind set that high profile collegiate athletics serve to blunt this perception. The recent rounds of legislative treatment of higher education tends to belie that. At FSU a fine stadium was constructed in the guise of an academic building using public funds, indicative of the political power their sports program wields in the legislative chambers. I’m quite sure that the FSU administration is concerned that if they took steps to reign in their athletic program, they would face legislative wrath in one form or another. Never mind that the program is undoubtedly among the vast majority that actually operates at a net loss if costs are honestly accounted for. The salary paid the head coach is just the tip of the ice berg. But then, since the legislative view appears to be increasingly hostile to the academic mission of the institution anyway, might this be the time to take definitive action to curb the insatiable drain on resources their sports program has come to represent?
deliajones - January 4, 2010 at 12:48 pm
“which struggles yearly to operate a doctoral program on top of its campus-wide service and major-related courses.”Don’t mean to grab the thread, but this statement may well be another problem in higher education–too many doctoral programs in the liberal arts. Can a program that is struggling really be of high quality–and why should there be any programs that are not?As academicians we like to go after athletics, but we have some of our own housekeeping to do…
goxewu - January 4, 2010 at 2:59 pm
Prof. Ruse is correct in his perception of, and ethical outrage at, bigtime college football. But bigtime college football didn’t drop onto Florida State (or Texas or Alabama or USC or LSU or…) fully formed from a conspiracy of college presidents and their ADs.A long, long time ago–but still 40 years after some men from Cambridge first thought they could win a rowing race against Oxford should one be held–some college men from Rutgers thought they could beat some men from Princeton in a football game, should one be held. Sort of healthy, outdoor contest soon became an understandable fixture for understandably competitive college men. Equally understandably, spectators soon gathered, and intercollegiate football games became the rage all up and down the East Coast. Havard was the first football juggernaut, with Yale and “Pudge” Heffelfinger not far behind. (Upstart Michigan became “champions of the West.”) Tickets were sold, pseudo-student “ringers” recruited (George Gipp, of “win one for the Gipper” Notre Dame fame, was a notorious “tramp” athlete–a breed of men who went from school to school, playing for under-the-table rewards) and, in 1927, an estimated crowd of 120,000 people watched Notre Dame play USC in Chicago.Flash forward to television: first the networks, with one or two games on Saturday in the 1950s, and then cable, with games on night and day, three, four, five days a week. College football games deliver tens of millions of eyes to advertisers paying enormous amounts of money to purvey cars, beer, and snack foods. Colleges with football teams on television get lots and lots of money from the games. Alas, the cost of maintaining a bigtime college football programs–i.e., stadium construction, training facilities, recruiting budgets, various machinery for spectacles, and coaches’ salaries–has grown as fast, if not faster, than the television and ticket revenue.Meanwhile, however, alumni, and non-alumni living in the region (or non-alumni who just like the team’s nickname, or colors, or a player or two) have identified ferociously with college football teams. (Read the comments on college football articles on AOL’s “Fanhouse” to get an idea of the intensity of their passions.) Such people who happen to have a lot of money become “boosters” and help close any deficit. Today, most bigtime college football programs, which typically earn huge revenues but also endure huge expenses, operate at a relatively small loss. That loss is justified–somewhat reasonably–as advertising expense. Most people in the U.S. who’ve heard of Florida State have heard of it because of its football teams; the same obtains with Notre Dame, USC, LSU and the rest. Doubtless many students apply to those schools because of the fame generated by the football teams, and doubtless many alumni and others give money to these colleges because of that fame.But there are these nagging little problems of integrity and, with growing frequency, bad publicity. The best available high school football players are not, unfortunately, always qualified to be students at those colleges, so admission requirements have to be skewed in order to admit them. And outside-the-rules perqs (use of cars, spending money, undeserved passing grades) are often necessary to gain and retain the services of the best players. Football is a particularly violent sport and often the players’ trained hair-trigger aggression is not confined to the playing field. Finally, the economically gargantuan fiefdoms that football programs have become are, in most bigtime football schools, the tail that wags the dog; the football coach outsalaries the college president three or four to one, and the AD often has more de facto authority than the president. (Yes, multimillion-dollar coaches are fired all the time, but they’re replaced by other multimillion-dollar coaches and it’s boosters and jock-minded trustees who actually fire them, only nominally the president.)The end result is the semi-autonomous, anti-intellectual (or at least non-intellectual) parallel institution, supplying “product” to television networks and advertisers, that astonishes the likes of Prof. Ruse. Most of us who’ve grown up with this blight are like the proverbial frog in the water that’s heated so slowly the frog doesn’t notice before it dies from the heat. If we went to France and suddenly encountered the “Fightin’ Baguettes” from the Sorbonne against the “Tigres d’Or” from the University of Lille battling in the in the Critoen Lavender Bowl before 80,000 fans in the Stade de France, for the national championship of college rugby, we’d be just as daunted.Since bigtime college football schools have no shame, since so many of us (including me) will ignore all kinds of corruption in order to watch large, speedy men in colorful uniforms collide, and since the egos of so many people (especially in the South, hence the pre-eminence of the Southeastern Conference, which has been written about in the CHE) are entwined with bigtime college football teams, the prognonsis is, alas, for more of the same. Until, that is, the whole thing starts to crumble from its own weight. As funds for the educational arms of bigtime college football schools (i.e., those pesky little things called academics) decrease preciptiously, and as salaries for football coaches continue to rise outrageously, maybe something will happen.In the meantime, how ’bout dem Crimson Tide!
pwherry - January 4, 2010 at 3:04 pm
Metaphysician, heal thyself. While I agree with most of what has been said here, I would carry the analysis a step further. How many of those legislators we in public ed love to bash are our graduates? In the state where I lived some 15 – 20 years ago, a state senator (chair of the Senate Appropriations committee, no less) was quoted as wondering why so much money was needed for the state land-grant university library. “When I was a student there, I BOUGHT all my books.” What lessons did the university teach–and NOT teach–that man before conferring a degree? Then there is the matter of the value of a college education we DO allow to be publicized. We’ve all seen the figures about how much more money a college graduate makes over his or her lifetime compared to someone with less education. The good news is that people seem to believe it, hence they come to our institutions. The not-so-good news is that this message paints higher education as a private or individual good. If the individual is the one who gains, then the individual should just jolly well pay for it, right? We have completely lost sight of the collective or societal value of higher education, even as we continue to complain that the state (the society) doesn’t want to pay for it. One could argue that at least athletics programs are in some large part paid for by those who derive the entertainment value. That is of course not entirely true, given mandatory student athletics fees and bonding for facilities and so forth. And the social “value” of entertainment is perhaps a contradiction in terms. All I’m really saying is that those of us who whine in public about the lack of public funding for higher ed (and I count myself among that number) should spend at least as much time and energy advocating–in public–for the greater public value of our (dare I use the word?) enterprise. And, deliajones, if you think there are “too many” doctoral programs in the liberal arts, what is your plan for teaching all those intro/gen ed courses without graduate teaching assistants?
paprieto - January 4, 2010 at 7:36 pm
Just for scholarly precision Morris Berman already wrote the Twilight of American Culture and Dark Ages America. One describes de decline and the other the fall.
goxewu - January 5, 2010 at 10:02 am
FYI, the University of Michigan just hired the CEO of Domino’s Pizza to be its new AD. Granted, the guy is a Michigan alum, played football there, and is already on the board of trustees, but the hiring says in upper-case boldface underlined italics that athletics at Michigan is, pure and simple, a business with almost nothing to do with academics. It’s probably not long before some exec from ESPN or FoxSports gets an AD job.
hms3683 - January 5, 2010 at 10:28 am
Before we bash football programs, we should realize the impact that they have on the quality of life on the campus. For instance, while pursuing my doctorate at FSU, it was an easy matter to pick up tickets to games and sell them for $100 a pair on North Monroe street. That’s $600 each year that football brings to a teaching assistant who would otherwise be living on $1400/semester. And now there is a coach with only 1.8 million dollars a year of salary. That has to be a big reduction from what Bowden was making. Maybe they could circulate the savings to some of the adjuncts or TAs who are acting as adjuncts. I remember a conversation I had in a hallway with a freshman who, on being issued a schedule, was seeking to locate the office of “Professor Staff”. A quick view of his schedule showed that all of his classes wre being conducted by persons who could not be identified as professors in the “system”. But, if this person manages to get past the mass of nearly untrained teachers placed as a hurdle before him, he might be able to reach the classes conducted by Dean Falk and others like her. Meanwhile, football provides a point of pride in an institution that has otherwise substantially neglected his academic growth and development. As many voices there are calling for separation of football and academia, maybe a few ought to call for the NFL to actually create its own farm system instead of using major American universities to provide the service for free. Would the NFL be willing to pay $1.8 million a year to a farm league coach? Hardly! But FSU cannot seem to get traction for academic programs that consistently win at national competitions like the AECT Pacificorp Design and Development competition. Why would we expect people to get excited about academic excellence?
goxewu - January 5, 2010 at 11:59 am
“Meanwhile, football provides a point of pride in an institution that has otherwise substantially neglected his academic growth and development.”"Meanwhile, the war in Iraq provides a point of pride in a country that has otherwise substantially neglected its infrastructure and social safety net.”"Meanwhile, Hummer provides a point of pride in a company that has otherwise substantially neglected designing dependable cars with good fuel economy.”"Meanwhile, exotic transplants and appendage restoration provide a point of pride for a medical establishment that has otherwise neglected the well-being of vast segments of the population.”"Meanwhile, football provides a point of pride in a high schools that have otherwise substantially neglected their teaching staffs, classroom crowding, and teaching basic literacy.”And so on. Bread and circuses.
hms3683 - January 5, 2010 at 12:07 pm
Bread and circuses, indeed! And the circus is the place to go when you want to encounter clowns.
lking2 - January 5, 2010 at 3:23 pm
The fact that the big-time sports contagion spread beyond higher ed long ago to all levels of public and private secondary education is perhaps what is most disconcerting. I often hear the argument from supporters of such programs that many students would not bother attending school were it not for the opportunity to participate in football or basketball. Other arguments allude to the role of athletic coaches in molding young men and women into confident, healthy, and mature leaders. While each of these arguments contains a kernel of truth, the all too common occurrences of academic fraud and anti-social behavior on the part of players and coaches alike, should cause a reasonable person to question their merits.