Kevin at No Se Nada has a post up about Nobel laureate Carl Wieman leaving Colorado, and how it relates to the role of college athletics at an educational institution. (Check his comments for a special bonus Carl Wieman anecdote.)
Probably coincidentally, Timothy Burke at Swarthmore also has a post today about the role of college athletics. Burke is my go-to guy for deep thoughts on the mission of academia, particularly in the small college context, and this piece is typically excellent:
I noted that it’s fairly odd in a way that so much fervor gets put into the debate over whether the professoriate is too liberal, or whether academic institutions are stagnant, and yet this topic gets glossed over by the usual suspects hammering on universities and colleges for their shortcomings. In scope and significance, there is much more to worry about in terms of athletics and academia.
Happily, he doesn’t just take the knee-jerk “sports are dumb” position that is all too common among academics. Instead, he lays out the pros and cons of intercollegiate athletics in a very fair fashion, and offers a solution. I don’t entirely agree with his solution, but it’s a worthwhile read.
Good for us, a great new colleague, his talk last semester at UBC was one of the best talks I’ve even attended, on any topic.
About college sports, I tutored athletes during my years at the university of Texas, a big football school, and got to know what their life is like. One thing I find incredible is the system of rationalizations that makes it possible for them to remain unpaid. They have full time, hard physical job, a significant chance for injury and absolutely no alternatives. That job sure makes a lot of money for someone… Now that is what I call a sweatshop.
Thanks for pointing out the Burke post. Well thought-out, although I have a reservation about the decoupling he advocates. Mainly I think the intimate relationship between community and university arrived at via a major sports program is important (a point I think he concedes) and would be damaged irrevocably by decoupling the student-athlete from the academic institution. I don’t think that “the only thing that might seem lost in this scheme is that sense that students in residential programs benefit from an athletic experience.” I think a lot more would be lost.
I do agree that while the purpose of being a student-athlete is supposed to be about getting an education to use once you’re done with sports (for 99% of college athletes, that means once you graduate), there is an element of evading eduation in major D-I programs.
Two personal observations:
1- I undergradded at UC Davis which was non-scholarship D-II, and where I was a club sports participant. I loved that UCD was D-II and across-the-board non-scholarship. It was very impressive that UCD constantly won the D-II Sears Cup. Those days are gone now, as the administrators decided that chasing some elusive D-I dream was a bigger priority than keeping alive a true student-athlete tradition.
2- A roommate my first year in grad school undergradded at UC Berkeley and was close to the basketball team and its coach. He did a lot of tutoring of the bball team and the stories he had of the extensive cheating network built for the team and blessed by the coach was disturbing.
Just don’t throw out the baby with the water from the tub. Sport should have its place in the universities, to keep students healthy. From my experience I know how easy it is on the university to let yourself slip into just sitting before the computer without any physical excercise. And we all know that obesity is a real problem in rich societies.
Wow. You just don’t see a Nobel laureate openly rip his school a new one very often.
Moshe: About college sports, I tutored athletes during my years at the university of Texas, a big football school, and got to know what their life is like. One thing I find incredible is the system of rationalizations that makes it possible for them to remain unpaid. They have full time, hard physical job, a significant chance for injury and absolutely no alternatives.
Yeah. It’s amazing what a time-sink athletics can be for students, even at the Division III level. Baseball is probably the worst for us, as they have to play their games during the day, and thus end up missing a lot of classes during the week.
Playing games is hard work.
Kevin: Mainly I think the intimate relationship between community and university arrived at via a major sports program is important (a point I think he concedes) and would be damaged irrevocably by decoupling the student-athlete from the academic institution. I don’t think that “the only thing that might seem lost in this scheme is that sense that students in residential programs benefit from an athletic experience.” I think a lot more would be lost.
That’s pretty much my reaction as well. I think it’s important to retain at least a little contact between the students and the athletes. I don’t know that the mercenary club system Burke suggests would keep the same degree of connection between the team and the school for the alumni and students.
The problem really is how to reduce the corrosive aspects of the system without destroying the connection between the team and the institution. Another favorite proposal is to separate the playing from the scholarship for scholarship athletes– that is, while they’re playing football or basketball, hey don’t have to take classes, but after their eligibility is up, they get four free years of education. I think that suffers from the same problems Burke’s ideas does, though.
The best solution might be to just set up farm systems for football and basketball, they way they have them in baseball. Kids who are only interested in playing sports can go directly into the minor leagues, and drop the pretense of college, while those who are interested in getting an education can go to college and compete there. The problems there are that it would lower the level of collegiate competition (though I don’t really watch college basketball for the future NBA stars– I watch becuase it’s still recognizably basketball, unlike the NBA), and probably dramatically reduce the athletic revenue that’s used to pay for those scholarships now.
It’s a tough problem.
Chad, I meanwhile got to read your link, looks like a good system, I like the “market value salaries” among other things. Other system that works is the Canadian system which has athletics as just another academic program. The coaches not only makes professor salaries, they are professors I believe.
In fact your description of division 3 baseball sounds similar to that. For the football players I tutored things were significantly worse, they had classes in the morning, 3 hours of practice in the afternoon, and a window of 3 hours of studying with me before watching tape. Weekends and holidays were taken. Needless to say the emotional and mental commitment for studying was not quite there for the most part, but I really don’t blame them…
“though I don’t really watch college basketball for the future NBA stars– I watch becuase it’s still recognizably basketball, unlike the NBA”
Offtopic, but do you have anything against NBA?!?
Offtopic, but do you have anything against NBA?!?
A post on just this subject is forthcoming, either later tonight, or tomorrow morning (depending on how much class prep I get done this afternoon).