House Republicans Scale Back Bid for Education Cuts

Since when?

So basically, you’re saying that felons shouldn’t be entitled to scholarships because they committed a crime for which they’ve already (more than) paid their debt?  Sounds like you consider them less, dare I say, sub-human.  Nice.

jwr12 — You are reading into my comments something that I never asserted.  I well know that most of the big Division I football programs are not profitable, and that many of the programs that claim to be profitable are cooking the books.  The only point I wanted to make in reply to old nassu ’67 is that football coaches are paid a lot of money and their players receive scholarships because there is lots and lots of revenue brought in through football.  Revenue and profit are separate matters I am sure you would agree, but you can’t deny that football isn’t a huge revenue generator.

Frank Donoghue’s opinion flies in the face of most liberals, that convicted felons who have served their time should be given a second chance at life.  In Franks opinion since Trulon Henry is a convicted felon AND a football player on scholarship, he doesn’t deserve the same chances.  Would Frank have the same dismissive attitude of Trulon if he was at Illinois for a merit scholarship and got shot in the hand at a party?  Probably not, since Frank seems biased against college athletics in general so he will just give us the ‘facts’ that support his biased opinion.  A link to this incident in Franks post would have been helpful but hey, that probably would have diluted his position with messy facts…..

I’m sure the debate could go on indefinitely…but does anyone really, truly think we are going to sever “big time sports” from our universities?  We might as well debate removing TV from people’s homes or getting rid of Doritos or closing Walmart. 

Two things:

1.  RE: the assertion:  ”(bear in mind that post-season bowl games are incredibly lucrative events for college football teams)”

For all but the biggest bowls this assertion is incorrect.  Participating institutions wind up subsidizing bowl appearances by six-figure amounts.  For example, check the records of institutions that have participated in the Poinsettia Bowl during the past 5 years or so; an Illinois institution subsidized its appearance to the tune of over $400,000 (that’s on top of the bowl payout to the institution).  Institutions are required to buy pre-assigned blocks of tickets at pre-set prices; what they do with them and whether they recover their cost is their business, so say the bowl committees.  Then add in all the institutional support for athletic teams, team staff, equipment transportation, lodging, meals, travel, institutional subsidies of airfare prices to incentivize participation over a holiday season, required events and appearances, travel/lodging/meals for associated support groups (e.g., band, cheer squad), governing board members and spouses, athletics department staff and spouses (and sometimes other family members), favored boosters, favored public policy makers and spouses, etc. and then spread all that over a week or so and you can see why these things tend to be large money-losing propositions.  When looking at bowl payouts avoid looking only at the revenue side – balance that against the expense side.  And, don’t forget to try to find what non-public entities (i.e., foundations) might be kicking into the party.

2.  The discussion centers on D1 and D3 schools.  I would argue D2 is even worse, proportionately.  D2 provides scholarships but it does not have the big name, big donor, big television appearance, big postseason, big gate/ticket, big product endorsement, big speaking fee, big student population, big whatever characteristics of D1.  D2 programs are almost exclusively supported by student tuition and fees, and those fees often are given names that obscure from the paying student exactly what he/she is paying for.  Tuition waivers for student-athletes only have the effect of making the non-student-athlete pay for him/herself plus the student-athlete.  Once students figure out that the debt loads they are accumulating are, in part, paying for student-athletes, athletics staff, athletics facilities, and athletics operations, athletic program and institutional administrators will have some explaining and rethinking to do.

Participating institutions wind up subsidizing bowl appearances by six-figure amounts.
They do indeed and not just for the bowls. A great deal of effort goes into obscuring this fact. The profits are siphoned off into various “booster” functions and when it comes time for a new stadium, they go to the taxpayers with their hands out. This has virtually nothing to do with higher education.

While I appreciate the strong voice in favor of the central tasks of universities being educating students, conducting and publicizing research, and maintaining a robust community of inquiry, scholarship, and education –ok, granted, that last one is not in the “mission” articulated in the editorial, though it ought to be — I have to disagree about the stance that ought to be taken towards sports, whether Division I or otherwise.

Student athletes must be students first, and athletes second — and this can actually be done, and done well.  Clearly, there needs to be much more oversight, at all levels.  But going beyond this, it requires a reformation of the culture of the university and of athletics, not just putting procedures in place, e.g. requiring us instructors, to fill out progress reports on athletes, etc. 

That will require some consistent leadership — and, actually, contentious leadership, willing to take on alumni, the Athletic departments — as well as all the other components of the university community that tend to distract from the actual goals of education — some aspects of Student Life for example, or the fraternity/sorority systems.

Getting universities out of the business of athletics is an unlikely, and unrealistic prospect — and, even if it did occur, it could be done without actually returning academic institutions to a genuine, committed focus on teaching, learning, scholarship, and intellectual community.  Far better would be to aim at reforming the institutions, bit by bit, more and more requiring athletic departments to produce solid students integrated within the academic community.

Shootings of college athletes are apparently so common it’s not newsworthy for the national press. That was true at the University of Southern Mississippi. We still don’t know what happened when three University of Southern Mississippi football players were shot outside a night club last year:

“Three USM football players were shot outside of Remington’s Hunt Club at about 1:20 a.m. on 14-Nov-2010. The three players have been identified as Martez Smith, a 22-year-old senior, Deddrick Jones, a 23-year-old junior, and Tim Green, a 21-year-old junior. Smith is a starting linebacker, Jones is a back-up linebacker, and Green is a starting defensive lineman. The three players were transported from the Hunt Club to Forrest General Hospital, where they were listed in critical condition. Later on 14-Nov-2010, however, doctors managed to stabilize each of the three USM athletes.” (usmnews.net)

We got the usual glib blather from coaches and administrators: “USM head football coach Larry Fedora issued a brief statement, saying that “[d]uring this difficult time our thoughts and prayers are with these three members of our Southern Miss family, Martez, Tim and Deddrick, as well as their families.”

“In its own presser, USM is referring to the student-athletes as being “injured” rather than “wounded.” In it, [USM President] Saunders also offered an official statement: ‘At Southern Miss this afternoon our number one concern is for the health and welfare of these students and for their family members who await their recovery. We will do all we can to assist these young men and their families, as well as assist the Hattiesburg Police Department in its investigation of this event.’”

To this day, we don’t know the details of the shootings.  Administrators and coaches keep secrets. They are really good at keeping secrets. But how can citizens improve their institutions if the administrators who run them conceal as much information as they can get away with? Does revelation of information and improvement of institutions have to await instances of crisis? 

Chauncey M. DePree, Jr., Professor, University of Southern Mississippi

I would be curious to see a study that relates big athletics programs to overall indicators of student lifestyle health, like exercise, drinking, obesity, smoking, etc.  I’ll wager that big time sports–while indeed encouraging a small few to be heavily physically active — encourages a lot of unhealthy couch potatoism in the more general student body.  

So much rich fodder here for thoughtful conversation and potential change in higher education and American society.  Young men are trained by million dollar coaches to perform for crowds of paying, cheering fans, while injuring their opponents and themselves beyond repair.  Draconian and racially unjust criminal laws result in the incarceration of a large percentage of the same cohort for behavior that is sometimes less damaging and strikingly similar to the behavior required in a college football game. Mix in the corrupting influence of big money so that any conversation about what is morally right for the players ends up focusing on how much college football costs, how much revenue it brings in, and the lottery-like chances that a small percentage of college athletes will survive and become rich in professional sports.  Add the drugs used illegally, or at least ill-advisedly, to build muscle and deal with pain.  And the unmet need for a broad cross section students to have opportunities for healthy physical activities.  Here is one place we could start: let’s discuss whether colleges should recruit more felons and fewer football coaches.       

Come on, folks.  It’s about gambling. Period.

moongate, I couldn’t agree with you more.. it is truly a moot point in that like what is happening in government, big business rules now and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future.

I cannot agree with that assertion, doctorpapa.  University of Chicago dropped out of big time athletics quite a while ago, and they have done fine, as do many other non-Ivy schools that are not in D1 or, even if they are, have programs that are chronically uncompetitive (Tulane, for example).  Even more to the point, if this were a change that was instituted nationwide all at once, the change would represent a level playing field for many schools and thus the “pain” you anticipate would be so diffused as to be irrelevant.

While certainly there are many students that attend schools based on big-time athletics, I think after the initial shock of the change the paradigm would shift.  After all, if all the programs were essentially divorced from the schools to be like minor league sports, students could only attend schools based on other factors.  Absent this factor at any school at all (that is, all schools have the equivalent of club sports, not this professional stuff that exists today), it isn’t like students won’t go to college because of it.  Surely you are not claiming that, but instead are claiming that certain schools get better enrollment based on the big time sports.  That may be, but again if no one had it, students are going to go to school anyway.  I am sure these schools would fare just fine.

I can only imagine that what you really mean is that eliminating big-time sports would eliminate the tailgating and other party activities that students do to drink and get generally rowdy.  Students don’t need the excuse of big-time sports for this, it just is a convenient focal point for it when it exists.  Just like pro sports is, e.g. the Saints when they were on their Super Bowl run was a great focal point for students in New Orleans to have similar parties.

Now the matter of alumni donations is totally different, but again I believe that after an initial dip, things would return to normal quickly enough.  Again, schools that have dropped programs in the past have not seen the calamitous shortages often predicted, and in some cases saw nice increases.  In fact, there is huge concern that giving to Penn State will see a large falloff because of disgust with what happened.  Given the underlying rot that inevitably comes with this kind of money coupled with the testosterone fueled sense of entitlement that is inevitable with these programs as they currently exist (after all, Penn State was considered the model of a clean program until this, although now it is becoming clear there were many other incidents swept under the rug), and the fact that in this Internet age it is harder and harder to keep these things out of the public eye, there is a great risk that these schools will suffer scandal at some point.

Let’s have the schools get back to focusing on academics, public service, and other missions that are far more in line with that with which we associate higher education.  Athleticism is great, let’s have it be for all students at a much more integrated level, not as a professional spectator phenomenon.

The issue is not your job description. The issue is the character and ethos of higher education. 

I’m glad to see you’ve started a discussion about the necessary elimination of intercollegiate sports, but I’m sad to see the Penn State scandal used as impetus. Indeed, the extent of the coverup at Penn State is likely to be profound, and the rampant cheating that has occurred at Miami, USC, and your own institution, Ohio State, is disturbing as well.  Nevertheless, from a student’s perspective, the real harm to institutional academic advancement comes specifically by way of football and basketball programs (the so-called “revenue sports”), and it is accomplished in daily degrees that, in aggregate, add up to a much greater strain on the system than the relatively infrequent scandals mentioned above. 

It has already been mentioned here that few Division 1 universities receive a net profit from football and/or basketball, and that better use of monetary resources could be found to benefit students, faculty and community. Many universities participate in the sporting arms race by hiring ever more expensive coaches and building ever more modern facilities in the hope they will soon join the small profit-generating elite. Students and faculty suffer greatly in their respective school’s (often futile) attempt to reach profitability.

Beyond this, however, there are another ways in which even the largest, most profitable universities betray their academic missions and cause students harm.Ohio State and other large universities pride themselves on “Diversity”, or the confluence of academic rigor and social interaction with those of different backgrounds and perspectives.  In my experience as an English major at Ohio State, I have never encountered a football or basketball player in any of my classes beyond the most basic, and neither have my friends majoring in history, philosophy, architecture, engineering, and art.  Seeking explanation, I have been told by one of the OSU coaching assistants that football players are encouraged to take easy classes at certain times and with certain professors for the sake of retaining eligibility, and that teachers are often put upon to pay special attention to and make special exceptions for football and basketball players-even beyond the demands of their travel and practice schedules. This seems about right, as in the classes in which my friends and I have encountered football and basketball players, there have always been more than one present, (and I think this has as much to do with the expected ease of passing the class as it does with the commonality of scheduling conflicts).  

Further, scholarship athletes playing football and basketball are, to a great degree, purposefully isolated from their fellow students on campus. They are commonly made to room with one another in on-campus dorms, and encouraged to do so after their inevitable moves to off-campus apartments (often alleged to be owned by unscrupulous landlords asked by boosters and program affiliates to rent to football and basketball players). This problem of a sort of parallel path through the university system has been recognized by various administrations as detrimental to the mission of the university. Indeed, Gordon Gee spoke about and sought to eliminate exactly this problem  while President of Vanderbilt. 

Because of the absence of academic rigor, and because of their relative isolation from fellow students, scholarship football and basketball players at Ohio State and similar institutions don’t contribute their fair share to the college experience of others (unless you count their accomplishments on the field), and don’t receive their fair share of challenging academic instruction  and engagement with fellow students in the classroom. Instead of facilitating “Diversity,” scholarship athletes playing football or basketball, (as a group), diminish the education of their peers while depriving them the potential contributions of those not admitted to the university who might take their place (perhaps in the form of those receiving academic scholarships).  If the familiar argument, made by many universities, that scholarship athletes are earning an education from a world-class institution in return for their performances on the field is to be valid, it is supremely important that the universities making such arguments guarantee this is, in fact, what is being offered to those who play for them. Instead, universities like Ohio State keep significant groups of largely under-qualified students apart from their classmates and challenging coursework, and expect everyone to pretend their college experience is of the normal quality received by other students. 

While it’s useful then, to use examples of scandal and cheating to illustrate how far certain universities will go to preserve the culture of revenue sports on campus, it more instructive to illuminate the ways in which the presence of such sports erodes the common mission of the universities that participate in them on a daily basis. The payoffs, special access to events, paid trips, and extra benefits scholarship athletes sometimes illegally receive certainly degrade the reputation of college sports, but they are only indirectly damaging to the faculty and students on campus.  The direct and fundamental damage that comes from scholarship athletes playing  football and basketball at major universities comes from a system that enables them to deprive their peers and themselves of a proper college education. Universities must either demand the same (preferably high) standards for all students, or eliminate scholarship sports.

By accepting this gift from a Wall Street Investment Firm partner, does Middlebury College become part of the 1%?

That’s a fantastic gift!  When they use the word “transformative”, this falls into that category.