I had hoped to spend time reading Spinoza to find why when asked "do you believe in God?" Einstein always answered "I believe in the God of Spinoza". I promise to come back when I have a revelation.
My thoughts recently have been far more mundane, and yet they have me questioning what is really important? I assume that readers know me personally (as who would read the rantings of an old man otherwise)so you probably know that my brother Bob is a professor at the University of Oklahoma. Bob will be at OU for 25 years soon, and he has had a tremendous impact on his field of water quality and the environment. That said, he has also been drawn into, albeit peripherally, the madness of OU and Big 12 football. Football is truly a religious experience there on the plains and his friends follow the Sooners like bloodhounds hunting a fox. The recent news out of OU, and recent outrage of OU football fans, has been the move from OU to USC by their head coach Lincoln Riley. The twitter sphere, the YouTube channels, and sports reporters across college football have analyzed and scrutinized this move to death. OU has moved on and hired an excellent coach from Clemson so the fire has died down, but the anger and vitriol directed at Riley has been astonishing. All this brings me to my point; what does any of this have to do with the business of the university?
There are several possible answers to this question. Football generates a fun environment for those four years of deferred adulthood many of us experience. Football generates alumni support and creates a national audience for successful teams. Football can, and often does (again for high-profile, successful teams) generate revenue from TV, logo'ed items, gate receipts, and now, even beer sales. That answers in part the question as this all has to do with "business" but little to nothing to do with the university's mission of teaching/learning, research, and service.
I got into a bit of hot water in my last position, president of a start-up college, when I said that vegan bars, climbing walls, and "lazy rivers" had nothing to do with teaching and learning. I was castigated in the press as abrasive, so be it. The simple truth is that higher education is engaged in an arms race that will seriously undermine the quality and desirability of American Higher Ed. Our spends on amenities to attract more and more students to "generate net tuition revenues" will result in fewer options as colleges unable to participate in the "arms race" will shrink or disappear, and institutions engaged in branding will spend more and more time and money on "the brand" while making inadequate investments in quality teaching. The war has already begun in classrooms across the nation where the battleground has been marked by donors trying to direct or re-direct curricula to fit a particular ideology or perspective. I can almost hear the collective eyebrows being raised as the defense is that "the damn liberals in the classrooms have brainwashed our young!", and that it is time that different values are inculcated in those classrooms.
What is the connection between football, an arms race for students, and ideology? Simple. Money.
As the federal government and states have pulled back support for higher education and opened up opportunities for marginal, high tuition, schools filled with empty promises while strangling state systems and opening up the area of accreditation which served as some measure of quality control, we see the arms race bringing in not just missiles, but tanks, howitzers, and even ground troops. Ask anyone who ever worked for a school that compensated their recruiting staff on meaning enrollment goals, they are the ground troops on the front lines and the attrition rate both for recruiters and the students they enroll are staggering. War without bloodshed, but plenty of casualties.
With tongue firmly in cheek I will close with this quote from my favorite work of fiction, A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
“A firm rule must be imposed upon our nation before it destroys itself. The United States needs some theology and geometry, some taste and decency. I suspect that we are teetering on the edge of the abyss.”
Thank you if you read all the way to the end!
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