[gratuitous hijack] Philosophy might be the wrong choice for this particular question – they may not be getting jobs as philosophers, but that isn’t the point of most traditional arts and sciences majors. Over the course of their careers, philosophy majors do pretty darn well, with mid-career earnings that outstrip business, marketing, nursing, and a number of other supposedly “practical” majors.
You may now return to your regularly scheduled conversation [/gratuitous hijack]
Awesome link. Can I swap in the ones on that list that fall below Athletic Training or Exercise Science to badmouth the earning potential of Religious Studies or Art History?
I’m surprised how many people agree with the OP. Yes, there has been a lot of moral corruption lately in college athletics. This Penn State thing is, by far, the most horrible. But, rather than facing the problems with college athletics head on, you’d rather ban them completely? That makes no sense from a financial standpoint. Athletic departments rake in so much money and recognition that it can’t help but benefit the university as a whole. Banning college athletics is not the solution to their problems.
Yes, sports certainly accomplishes these laudable goals. That is why I would encourage the entire student body to take part in a variety of physical exercises and pursuits.
Explain to me now how having a small group of elite athletes on campus, who take a huge amount of priority and resources helps this goal. Explain please, how sitting in bleachers watching a group of men throw a ball through a metal hoop will make the student body “strong in mind and body”
I blame television and the money it brought into the equation. Kill that and you get rid of most of the problems with big school athletics.
$.
And, to elaborate, $.
It should be stressed, though, that there are many, many athletic programs at many, many universities which run very well, avoid ethical problems, and graduate highly motivated students who have learned teamwork, discipline, how to handle success and failure with grace and dignity; in other words, the skills they will need to succeed in the world past college.
You don’t generally hear about them, though, because they don’t cause trouble. The ones you hear about are the big name programs which often seem to exist in a shadow realm adjacent to, but not associated with, actual education.
This is what is known as “teachable moment”–a chance to consider the complete lack of moral or educational function in college athletics, and the chance to see what stressing athletic programs to the exclusion of moral or educational goals leads to. You may ignore this if you wish, and you obviously do.
Sure (although it’s worth bearing in mind that some of those Religious Studies majors probably intend to pursue an occupation that entails taking a vow of poverty, which no doubt brings down the average a bit).
So make stricter rules and actually enforce them. The NCAA needs to come down hard on coaches and ADs who run dirty programs. The best way to do that would be to directly hit their wallets, not slap them with postseason bans and scholarship restrictions.
And, believe it or not, a majority student athletes are good kids focused on getting an education. It’s (usually) the high profile football/basketball programs who are making the money and then behaving badly. But there are other sports and they offer opportunities that a lot of kids wouldn’t get otherwise. And those high profile programs, they’re bringing in money that benefits everyone at the university. Getting rid of them is just not realistic.
The problem seems to be mainly with the high-profile, high-profit sports such as basketball and football. These are not going to go away at the college level.
Here’s an idea: These “college” sports are effectively professional sports at this point, particularly for the top 25 teams. The universities in question seem to like having professional sports teams to represent them. So let’s cut to the chase - make them professional teams based at a university or college. Stop the pretense of “student” athletes for these teams and scholarships for these “students”. Just hire the best athletes you can and run these teams as a professional league - they could be farm teams or training league teams for the NBA or NFL.
Profit from these sports and donations to them can continue as before - But they will be a separate entity from the other business of a university - educating students.
The university or college can continue with all the other student sports that help encourage physical fitness in the student body, have them be strong in mind and body and teach them to be able to compete with others. Give ALL the student body facilities to help them accomplish this, and leave the professional athletes on their own, to represent the school as a professional team.
If these athletes want to pursue an educational goal while they are playing for your team - great! But they receive no special treatment.
At least in football at big schools, it’s always been bad. In fact, over 100 years ago, Michigan was expelled from the conference that became the Big Ten, largely over issues that dealt with focusing on athletics over academics. It wasn’t unusual for schools to bring in ringers in those days.
That said, I have to agree with those who say that the problem is largely limited to football and basketball. There are also issues with other sports which serve as revenue sports (e.g., hockey, baseball, or lacrosse, where applicable). Outside of the revenue sports in Division 1, athletes do fit the student-athlete ideal much better. Some of the best college students that I’ve seen have been athletes. Many teams keep a close eye on the academic status of their team member’s, and offer additional help to those in trouble.
De-emphasizing the revenue sports in Division 1 is likely a good idea. I strongly disagree with eliminating sports altogether.
You don’t have to ban college sports, just eliminate all sports scholarships.
Most of the problems with college athletics occurs with Men’s Basketball and Football. Because this is where the money is. Because of that, these sports typically subsidize or outright pay for all the other scholarship sports (men’a and women’s) at most if not all Division I schools. To get rid of college athletics because a few (what 10-20 a year?) schools do something fishy gets rid of an institution that provides hundreds of thousands of scholarships annually for scholar-athletes to go to school. Additionally, as has been mentioned, sports provide the easiest (maybe best) marketing for a university. When Butler made the Final 4 a couple of years ago, applications increased. Same for George Mason. Before Boise St. started to make national waves in football, do you think anyone outside of Idaho knew it existed?
Universities have many missions, but to fulfill those missions they need money. I bet that every president knows what the contributions from the Athletic Department are to his or her institution. When it no longer becomes worth it, they will go away. But donations, diversity, licensing, recognition, pride, ticket sales and concessions all impact the college to some degree and cannot be discounted.
Proud fan of the University of Kentucky where not only is the Athletic Department completely self-funded - it also provides millions of dollars a year to the General Scholarship fund for the University as a whole. Go Cats.
But even at a smaller school (I currently teach at a really small university), the basketball, baseball, and soccer players (we don’t have a football team) often have events scheduled during their classes. For example, they may have a game out of state to be played on a Friday, meaning that they’ll miss all of their Thursday and Friday classes. And the teachers have to make allowances for these absences. In a sense, the sports always takes priority over their classes. They’re not going to miss a game in order to attend a lecture or take a test, but it’s often the other way around.
But, shrug, sports seems to be given way too much priority in American culture. Heck, even on TV, if a sports game goes long, they always keep showing it rather than cutting it off and going to the regularly scheduled sitcom. I’ve never seen a sitcom that was allowed to pre-empt a sporting event.
But I’d like to. 
Given Kentucky’s insistence on recruiting minority athletes* which have no business being in a college (as demonstrated in a recent 10-year period by their 31% and 55% 6-year graduation rates** for basketball and football, respectively), I would not be so proud of how Kentucky is preparing our youth for the future.
** http://www.kentucky.com/2009/11/19/1025724/uk-near-back-of-sec-pack-in-ncaas.html
Confession: I skimmed the thread but didn’t read it because I have to leave soon for an appointment.
Don’t college sports bring in a lot of money to the school? Or is that money turned right back into the sports program?
In high school I remember the sports teams (esp. football) brought in a lot of money, but it went to new uniforms and other sports related things; meanwhile in classes we were getting quizzes and handouts printed on the back of old quizzes and handouts because we had no new paper available. :rolleyes:
I am not a sports fan but I can see that they may be useful for a university financially, though I’d like to see the numbers.
I don’t like that athletes aren’t treated the same as other students, and it’s my understanding that they get excused absences and preferencial grading, though I don’t have cites to back that up–it’s just the feeling I’ve gotten from what I’ve seen/read/heard and I’m willing to be corrected.
Look, college sports provides a healthy ballance to a group of institutions that would otherwise be inundated with nerdism, poindexteritis and geekery.
I think students engaged in physical activity is probably a good thing, and team sports is fine. I think football does far too much long term physical damage to continue and should go the way of the dodo. I think the big money in college sports hurts academics, which I mysteriously think is the real point of higher education. The whole thing should be taken down a few notches in the amount of money spent on it.
Awesome. Let’s extend that! Every law firm, think tank, boardroom, presidential cabinet and publishing house should have at least one athlete to mix things up a bit.
The fact that there was no money for new paper is only relevant if the football program was taking money from the school that would have otherwise gone to other uses. If the football program was cut, would the donations go to academics, or would they go away? Would the state funding go into academics, or would the school’s budget just get cut?
Kentucky may be doing worse than most other SEC schools, but it seems unlikely that eliminating the football and basketball programs would give better results. Of those student athletes, how many would have graduated in the same 6-year period without the athletic scholarships? If it’s less than 31% and 55%, it seems like having the sports better prepared the youth than not having the programs would have.