Can Academics and Athletics Coexist Peacefully?
Anybody out there surprised that faculty members at nearly two dozens major colleges and universities report feeling “disengaged from the athletics process on campuses”?
Thank you, Coach Paterno. You can put your hand down now.
A recent survey by the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics “reveals” that the academy thinks sports should rank pretty low on the university totem pole, to which the only response can be, well, duh. With the rise of big-time college athletics, faculty members are feeling increasingly marginalized, and, having spoken with many of them at the smallish Division I school where I used to work, I can tell you many of them are downright resentful. They resent the money coaches make, the attention that’s paid to games and not research, and the fact that subpar students are in their classrooms simply because they can throw or shoot a ball well.
The story behind the story, though, is that the American higher education enterprise is hardly in danger of being swallowed up by sports. While D-I gets the TV money and the big donations, there are hundreds and hundreds of Division II and III schools where there are true student-athletes and where academics takes center stage. More, even at most D-I schools, scholarship is primary. Sports factories are the exception, not the rule, and though faculty may complain that they are too big an exception, it’s too late to put the toothpaste back in the tube. Better to work together to acknowledge the influence of money in collegiate athletics and figure out how to stay true to the mission of education:
… Nathan Tublitz, a professor of biology at Oregon and co-chairman of the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics, a group formed to link faculty governance on different campuses and give faculty a voice on athletic reform, said faculty members can help create an atmosphere in which academic integrity is not buried by commercial enterprise.
“The solution is for the faculty to work closely with the administrations and with the presidents to change their viewpoints and to get them to think about the long-term academic health of the university,” Tublitz said. “Because it’s in the best interests of the university to stay academically strong. If we’re sacrificing the academic side for the athletic side, then that may be a short-term gain for the president who’s in office at the moment. But it’s not going to be a long-term road to success.” | 501(c)
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