Amid all the hyperbole over Ebola and ISIS terrorism that affects
very few people in the United States, there is a crisis being revealed that
affects us all; the epicenter of that crisis is the University of North
Carolina (UNC). In truth, the crisis includes every university and college
across the nation. Those who follow the news might be led to think of sports programs
because of the reference to UNC and the unraveling of their “paper courses” in which
student athletes can take courses that require a paper no class work; thus
taking away much needed practice time. In addition, an investigation revealed for
20 years “a” university administrator gave marks on the papers according to the
needs of the student as told by the coaches not to mention that a whistle
blower told investigators that “someone” paid a ghostwriter to write the papers.
The connection between having a wining team in a major sport and grade
corruption of student athlete should be obvious to everyone—it is not new nor
is it complex.
University administrators brag that major sports teams are
as big money makers for their institutions; however, when someone searches for
serious balance sheets, we cannot find them. The reason they do not exist is
they reveal the cost of equipping the teams, paying for team travel, maintaining
stadiums, and paying for coaches salaries exceeds income, at least according to
some people such as Murray Sperber in his well-researched book, Beer and Circus: How Big Time College Sports
is Crippling Undergraduate Education (2000). How could we overlook the fact
that they pay exorbitant salaries to coaches; often the highest paid individuals
in the state, more than the governor of the state or the president of the university.
In addition, it is common knowledge that the student athletes are in truth
unpaid professionals. The entire system stinks of corruption from top to bottom
and worst of all we know it. We know
that this corrupting influence travels from high schools to graduate school leaving
a trail of glorified ignorance in its wake.
What is also shocking is that most people do not appreciate
the athletic programs are not the major corruptor of university level education
embraced by university administrators, in fact, most people have no clue of
what is happening behind the “white tower” façade of our universities. The
hidden corruptor is the pervasive industrial driven patentable research, which
has all but replaced taxpayer driven basic research; tax payer based research that
benefits specific industries and not of general benefit to everyone. The drivers
are not only in industry and government but also and especially in the front
offices of the universities. The average American brags about our educational
system being the best in the world even though we have hints from time to time
that it is not. We see all these wonderful inventions coming out of our
universities but seem not to see the ever-increasing deficit in education of
their graduates. Because we have “enough” excellence in our system of higher
education to hide from us what is bad, we have no idea of how good it really
could be.
Many things are causing the pendulum to swing away from classroom
and into support for athletics and industrial research but I believe its root-cause
is good old innate human greed at all levels; not someone else’s, but yours.
Greed has taken over the innate need or drive to teach what we learn. Maya Angelou
said it so succinctly and beautifully; “If you learn, teach.” Innate need for
education is what drove us to build our great universities since the beginning of
time and now innate greed is tearing them apart; a conflict of innate drives. I
look at my own Alma Matter, the University of Minnesota, undergraduate,
professional, and graduate schools, and see an institution totally in the gripes
of athletics and industrialization under a leader corrupted by greed. The President of that university, a
chemical engineer not an educator, exemplified his ignorance of education by instituting
a “demonstration of entrepreneurship” as a tenure requirement.
University athletic complexes and university industrial
complexes are destroying us. Driven by the mantra of “no more taxes”, state governments
are not supporting our universities. The failure of taxpayers that is you and I,
to support higher education causes university administrators to seek other
sources of income. The rules of supply and demand prevent them from charging for
admission to games and charging students tuition
to pay the entire cost of the institution, which now includes paying research
professors who never see the inside of a classroom and are required to support
themselves with grants. Universities administrators use what little taxpayer
money there is to build stadiums and research laboratory thus shovel taxpayers’
money to benefit a few, including private hands, via circuitous routes.
Of course, “you” understand the significance of a university
having more professors and service personal than they do have students in a university.
Of course, “you” know some professors never enter a classroom. In addition, because
of the UNC revelations that people who we call educators give credits toward earning
a degree without the student taking a class and doing it for 20 years. I am
here to tell you it is not just athletic programs and it is not just UNC. Because it has been happening for 20 years,
we know universities have no quality control of their major purpose, which
should be education but isn’t—zero control. I personally know it is much
longer than that since it has been 47 years since I entered the professorial roles. It is all athletics
and industrial research and has to do with making money and not educating
students. Cutting your taxes is costing us
dearly as a nation. It is also hurting those outstanding educators who are
struggling mightily to do things right.
URL: firetreepub.blogspot.com Comments Invited and not moderated
No comments:
Post a Comment