Supreme Court Declines to Hear Case Over Sports Cuts at James Madison U.

January 9, 2012, 12:17 pm

The Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal over James Madison University’s decision six years ago to eliminate 10 athletics teams. The move lets stand two lower federal-court rulings that dismissed a nonprofit group’s lawsuit challenging the cuts. Last March a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld a lower court’s decision to dismiss claims by the group, Equity in Athletics Inc., that the university’s actions were unconstitutional and in violation of federal law. The case stems from James Madison’s announcement in 2006 that it would cut seven men’s and three women’s teams.

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unemployedacademic

It seems to me that you are being too generous. Discussing faculty productivity is a way to attack the faculty, especially full-time, tenure-stream and tenured faculty. Faculty ought not to assume that the people who raise the issue are honest participants in a dialogue. Instead, they are trying to transform the more democratic community of the recent university model into a business, a model in which wealthy elites hold power. How many corporations have been satisfied with modest profitability? How many corporate executives have not “bowed” to the allegedly impersonal forces of “the market” and fired employees, outsourced jobs and extorted public monies from governments? The prevalence of adjuncts in academe should be all the proof anyone needs that the business model of social relations is bad for the academy. Discussing productivity outside of the context of a vigorous protest movement against the very people who raise this issue is a Trojan horse for the outside pressures on universities, not a way to relieve them.
chuckkle

Bauerlein’s argument seems to proceed with no clear definition of what “productivity” is. Is research productivity measured by bean counting the number of articles published? Previously Bauerlein seemed to criticize some humanities research in particular as redundant, on superficial matters, and/or simplistic. As for teaching, is “productivity” simply having larger classes? How do you compare teaching a lecture class to 500 freshman and directing one PhD student through the dissertation? Can we measure teaching productivity similarly in different disciplines? By hours a week spent teaching?

And most of all, who decides what productivity is, and appropriate ways of measuring it?

Chuck Kleinhans
markbauerlein

This is precisely the question that is going to be worked out over the years, Chuck. Is productivity measured by number of students taught? By number of books and articles published? Amount of research dollars pulled in? Student evaluation scores?
cwm4c

Lost in this article is the important:

“Although a critique, the FSU paper does applaud the Texas plan for aiming to lower costs and strengthen teaching.”

Can we all agree these are good things? If so, how can we achieve it from the inside, rather than being directed to?
bunicula

Thank God ! (or rather the Supreme Court )
nybound

I wonder how much money JMU (which was trying to save money) had to spend to fight this boneheaded frivolous lawsuit? I also wonder what the total court costs were for the public.