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Authors: Murray Sperber

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President Atchley made his comments a decade ago during a major economic recession and at a demographic low point in the enrollment history of the modern Big-time U. He believed that large, public universities
required reforming, but he was pessimistic about whether fundamental changes would take place. Ten years later, the need for reform is greater, but because we live in one of the most unusual eras in American history—the longest period of prosperity on record—the current money flow and the increased enrollments mask the basic problems in higher education, temporarily paving them over with dollars.
Some Big-time U's have thrown cash at their general undergraduate education programs, hiring more part-time instructors, employing more graduate-student teaching assistants, sometimes even creating freshmen seminars taught by faculty—but then setting up large sophomore- and junior-level lecture courses to compensate for the seminars. These schools have also put more money into their honors programs than ever before. Many university officials claim that these changes—superficial and cosmetic—provide proof that Big-time U's are solving systemic problems.
The media, never inquiring deeply into higher education, has headlined the nips and tucks as substantive reforms. For example,
U.S. News
began its 2000 college issue with a feature article titled, “The Big Are Getting Better,” and subheaded, “Research universities are working to put their undergraduates first.” (The writers of this piece should have read
U.S. News's
charts on the increasingly high faculty/student ratios at Big-time U's, and the growing percentage of classes with more than fifty students—statistics that contradict “the big are getting better.”)
These days, economists discuss how the “wealth effect” generates improvident personal spending; an analogous term for the current attitude of higher education officials is the “fat, dumb, and happy effect.” During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the crisis caused by economic recession and low enrollment did not produce significant changes in general undergraduate education; the current “good times” have had even less effect. However, as pointed out in this book, public funding for higher education keeps decreasing, and a future recession could hit colleges and universities much harder than did any previous one (Chapter 9).
Yet Big-time U's pursue “prestige maximization” for their research and graduate programs with a greater zeal than ever before, and Upward Drift universities are the worst offenders. As one expert noted: “Being at the top of the [research] heap is the quintessential
positional good
” for these institutions, but the top “is limited by its very nature to a few winners—but all can aspire.” And degrade the quality of their general undergraduate education programs in the process.
 
For the above reasons, and all of the other ones stated in this book, fundamental change Should Happen at Big-time U's, but Probably Will Not
Happen. As a result, one possible scenario is a decline in importance of general undergraduate education: Big-time U's are delivering such an inferior product that corporate America might intervene and supplant them. John Chambers, the head of Cisco Systems, one of the most successful Internet companies, recently told the
New York Times:
If universities don't reinvent their curriculum and how they deliver them for an increasingly Net-driven economy, many students … will “go to school” on-line. Many big firms—Cisco, G.E., I.B.M., AT&T—are starting on-line academies to train new employees and to constantly upgrade the skills of existing ones.
In other words, many undergraduates currently receive educations of no use to them and their future employers. Therefore, unless schools radically retool, corporations will start to educate an increasing number of Americans, enabling them to skip a university education.
Higher education has survived challenges from other technologies, and accommodated to them. The industrial revolution in the nineteenth century did not end the American college system but forced it to change, making it stronger and more vibrant as a result. But this alteration took many decades; the Internet revolution is moving much more quickly and also leaping over national boundaries. John Chambers of Cisco Systems commented:
Unlike in the industrial revolution when you had to be in the right country or city to participate, in this new era capital will flow to whichever countries and companies install the best Internet and educational capabilities.
Big-time U's, with their residential campuses in college towns like Boulder, Colorado, will either adapt or experience massive enrollment drops, with increasing numbers of students attending a web campus in cyberspace but based somewhere such as Manchester, England. All that will remain at schools like the University of Colorado and other Big-time U's will be beer-and-circus—not even the pretense, as now, of general undergraduate education. And big-time college sports will become even bigger at these schools.
 
 
For many years, critics of big-time college sports, including this writer in
College Sports Inc.,
have offered long lists of What Should Happen in
intercollegiate athletics, only to see their ideas crash into What Is Happening—gargantuan growth and commercialization, along with increasing exploitation of athletes. Therefore, it seems best to confine What Should Happen to a core item, and then to focus on What Probably Will Happen, and why the latter will escalate beer-and-circus.
If you want to change college sports instantly, forget about athletic scholarships and bring in “need based only” grants, like the Ivies give. And take them totally out of the hands of the athletic department. Put the Financial Aid Office in charge, like it is for every other grant to a student.
—Edward “Moose” Krause, former coach and athletic director
at the University of Notre Dame
Proposal: End athletic scholarships and allow only need-based grants.
“Moose” Krause is correct, the termination of athletic scholarships would eliminate the athletic department's current employer/employee relationship with an athlete, as well as the coach's power to renew or cancel the scholarship every July. In addition, elimination of athletic scholarships would decrease some of the tension between intercollegiate athletes and regular students, and it also would allow athletes the same control over their lives now possessed by average undergraduates; in other words, many jocks would become ordinary students.
Schools give money to regularly enrolled students mainly on the basis of financial need; Financial Aid Offices, using the U.S. government's FAFSA form and sometimes the private school PROFILE form, ascertain each undergraduate's money needs. Universities continue the need-based system for as long as the student remains in school. Many athletes would qualify for need-based grants, and, most important, the athletic department would have no input into whether they received them or not, and whether they were renewed or not. This system has long worked for Ivy League schools as well as all those in Division III. In the student-athlete equation, need-based grants put the emphasis on the student part, and cancel the employer/ employee aspect of the athlete side.
 
In the history of college sports, athletic scholarships began during the 1930s when some have-not conferences of the era, particularly the Southwest and the Southeastern, adopted them to lure prime recruits to their athletic programs; the have-nots wanted to reach the same level as the wealthy conferences, particularly the Ivy League, Big Ten, and Pacific Coast. Many
higher education authorities opposed athletic scholarships, calling them “play for pay.” The Ivy League was adamantly against them, considering athletic scholarships antithetical to the mission of a university. The Ivies argued that athletic scholarships turned athletes into students brought to college for entertainment—not academic—purposes.
With this background as context, the debate within the NCAA on whether to institute athletic scholarships for all members continued through the 1940s and into the 1950s. Even important members of the sports media opposed them. Bill Stern, the radio “Voice of College Sports” in this period, wrote:
Getting a higher education should be the primary reason for any youngster going to college. Athletic achievements, however sensational, should be secondary and should serve as a means to an end, namely a legitimate college diploma. Let's keep the record straight, when a college athlete plays for pay, receiving money through athletic scholarships, he's a professional no matter what uniform he wears.
In 1953, ironically the same year that NCAA executive director Walter Byers invented the term
student-athlete
, the association approved athletic scholarships across the board. For many people within higher education, this marked a crucial moment in the history of intercollegiate athletics: the shift from amateurism to professionalism.
The Ivy League, the founders of big-time college sports, responded by refusing to give athletic scholarships and continuing their policy of need-based-only aid to all students, including athletes. They also began to deemphasize their college sports programs in various ways, including prohibiting their teams from playing in bowl games and not allowing spring football practice. Their moves sharpened the line between college sports amateurism and professionalism.
On the Ivy side, and also at the schools that joined them and eventually formed NCAA Division III, were teams with players who were authentic students at their colleges and universities. On the other side were all the schools awarding athletic scholarships and hoping that their athletes could pass their institution's educational requirements; but if the jocks failed academically, the schools would accommodate them, including with “gut” courses and “mickey” majors. As a result, the higher education landscape divided between big-time college sports schools, and academic colleges and universities. A minority of institutions managed to straddle the line, but the majority did not.
From the perspective of the twenty-first century, it is clear that the Ivy League presidents and Boards of Trustees came to a fork in the higher education road and had to choose between big-time college sports or big-time undergraduate education. They chose the academic path, and this decision helped the Ivy League ascend to the pinnacle of American higher education. Other schools selected the other path and began the slow but inevitable degradation of undergraduate education at their institutions.
 
If the NCAA decided to reverse its history and end athletic scholarships, allowing only need-based grants, many other problems in big-time college sports would disappear; however, so would the quality of play, as well as the TV revenue for big-time college basketball and football games, for March Madness and the bowls. With the termination of athletic scholarships, the Division III model would prevail, but how many fans would rush to their TV sets to watch an Oberlin versus Antioch basketball game?
In an ideal world, even a logical one, the need-based-only grant proposal should prevail. In the real United States of America, it will not succeed. Nevertheless, if current trends within College Sports MegaInc. continue, more schools might accept this solution than the proponents of big-time college sports imagine. What Might Happen in intercollegiate athletics in the next decade presents the following scenario.
If the package of [NCAA] proposals is passed [by the Division I membership] … high school prospects could receive pay or other compensation for athletic participation [while in high school] without jeopardizing their [college] eligibility … .
The association's most radical recommendation is directed at prospects who choose to sign and play professionally right out of high school … . If they played no more than a year as a pro, they could opt to sign with a college, start playing immediately and have a full four seasons of eligibility … .
Further, the NCAA is looking at allowing athletes to seek out loans based on future professional earnings.
—
USA Today,
March 2000
College Sports MegaInc. is edging toward paying the players, whether with money disguised as “loans” or, as suggested by NCAA executive director Cedric Dempsey, monthly payments termed
stipends
. In addition, the association wants to overlook previous lapses in amateurism, such as earning money from sports as a high school student, or even playing in professional leagues before entering college. As one NCAA official says,
“Amateurism deregulation would fix many of the problems” in big-time college sports.
In many ways, this is true: paying the players would end much of the cant and hypocrisy currently surrounding College Sports MegaInc., particularly the enforcement of the amateur regulations, for example, penalizing players when they accept various gifts, some as trivial as T-shirts. However, professionalizing intercollegiate athletics would usher in many new problems and forever change big-time college sports.
 
Most of the current NCAA plans for professionalization include specific sums of money; for example, Cedric Dempsey has mentioned $200 per month for the stipend to athletes. Probably the “loans based on future professional earnings” will also have a dollar ceiling. In addition, some of the rules already passed include specific sums: e.g., athletes are allowed to work at part-time jobs but not earn more than $2,000 a year from this employment.

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