In today’s post, I want to share an excerpt of a chapter I contributed to Knapp and Siegel’s The Business of Higher Education. The chapter explores student consumerism in higher education, which I consider one of the most important trends influencing our institutions. The excerpt suggests steps for universities considering how to deal with consumerism.
I fully intended for my post last week to be my only one on the UNC academic scandal. However, the reactions by the sports media and some within higher education force me to address the issue once again. The national sports media rushed to call on the university and the NCAA to rip down the championship banners in the Dean Dome. Pat Forde’s article called on the university to bring down the banners while the Wainstein Report was still warm from the copier. The calls to punish UNC didn’t stay in the sports section. Writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education, the well-known trade publication, Macalester College President Brian Rosenberg argued for revoking the university’s accreditation. For Rosenberg, forget the death penalty for athletics. Let’s kill the entire university.
To the Banner-Chasers and the Accreditation-Revokers, I have a plea from all of us who are concerned about the academic fraud: “Sit down and shut up!”
As a proud graduate of the University of North Carolina, I have watched the unfolding “paper class” scandal with a mixture of dismay, anger, and frustration. As a fan, I have watched the scandal frustrated with the media coverage and the oft-acknowledged failings of the NCAA enforcement process. In this way, I suspect I’m no different than many alumni. However, I am a little different in many alums in that I’m a scholar of higher education. Specifically, I study organizational and policy issues of colleges and universities. For this reason, as a researcher, I’ve felt that I have a special obligation when commenting on this scandal. Even with the prior investigations, it never seemed we had the full story and I didn’t want to comment on incomplete facts. With the release of the Wainstein investigation, I finally feel comfortable in the facts of what occurred to comment.
It is football season so it isn’t surprising for the University of Notre Dame to make headlines. Yet, the news this time doesn’t come from the gridiron. The university made headlines for extending benefits to same-sex spouses of employees. When the most famous religious institution in the country offers same-sex spousal benefits, it is time to take notice. The tide on same-sex marriage has changed faster than nearly any social debate I can recall. Moreover, it is time for all colleges to offer benefits to same-sex spouses.
This weekend should have been a glorious one for college football. There were amazing upsets with the #2, #3, #4, #6, #8, #14, #15, #16, #17, #18, and #19 ranked teams losing. However, I couldn’t shake the feeling that college football is broken. In what should be a celebration of the sport, I find myself disillusioned and increasingly disinterested in the results. There are three events that crystalize for me the problems of college football.
