Are You Not Entertained?

The President apparently worked the phones and told the sports executives that they need to plan on getting football going in September.

It makes sense only if you look at the issue from his perspective.  His base is also a sports-addicted population.  In the red states, NFL practically beats church-going during the season!

So, if there is no sports on the horizon, especially if there will be no NFL, then it will begin to dawn on even the most loyal tRump cultist that this COVID-19 is not any hoax, and that their dear leader has been lying to them.  As a result, in the elections in November, there won't be anything to stop the Democrats from running up the score against a weak and demoralized candidate and party.

I hope against hope that Americans will use this global catastrophe straighten out our individual and collective priorities.

I have, forever, blogged here about the awfully screwed up priorities of this American society (and others too) in which we paid gazillions to ball players, while systematically gutting long-term capacity building--from education to infrastructure to health care to ...

Here's a re-post of one of those from the past--this is from April 2017
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Recall the sound bite "we need more welders and less philosophers" from back when it was the season of the Republican primaries? I wish we had engaged in a whole lot of discussion regarding that statement from Senator Marco Rubio. Instead, we collectively shrugged and moved on.

We could, and should, have used that opportunity to engage in discussions on what education ought to accomplish. If we had, then we would have agreed that we need both welders and philosophers, and that higher education is failing to deliver them.

Public higher educational institutions have suffered from extensive mission creep over the years. It is best (worst?) seen in how sports-oriented the taxpayer subsidized colleges and universities have become. Welders and philosophers are apparently way less important than athletics in the mission of higher education!

Countries where people are far more sports-crazy than we are do not waste their taxpayer monies like we do here in the US. Europeans, for instance, are maniacal about soccer, but they know well that sports is sports, and education is education. Or, consider my old country, India, where cricket is practically a religion. Colleges do not waste enormous resources on cricket and its gods.

If only we had continued to engage with the welders/philosophers soundbite, then we would have ended up talking about the wasteful practices in higher education, with athletics as perhaps the foremost waste of taxpayer money. But, of course, public institutions do not want us to talk about this, and the sports-addicted taxpayers are even less interested it seems.

A year ago, journalists in Michigan attempted to understand how much taxpayer money is spent on athletics by public institutions in their state. It was not an easy project. They “obtained through the Freedom of Information Act the financial disclosure statements provided to the NCAA from Michigan's 13 public universities that offer NCAA-level athletics.” Yes, through the Freedom of Information Act!

What they found did not surprise any of us who have been critical of this unholy mix of sports and academics in public higher education. Not only did the public institutions spend gazillions on athletics, “students are often "kept in the dark" when it comes to how universities fund college athletics and the degree to which colleges are subsidizing sports.”

Yet, whenever they cry funding shortage, universities are ready to cut philosophy before they even think of reducing the sports subsidies. I wish that legislatures, including here in Oregon with our huge budget deficit, would question the wisdom of public colleges as entertainment arenas.

The university where I have been teaching for fifteen years is no exception. A decade ago, a 25-million dollar facility was built primarily to meet the NCAA Division II requirements. Such an outrageous expense would not have been incurred if sports were played at the lower tier National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA,) in which the university participated until the year 2000.

America is exceptional indeed—when it comes to diverting taxpayer money on entertainment, when that could be spent instead on welders and philosophers.

This taxpayer-supported entertainment is what the Declaration of Independence meant by "the pursuit of happiness"?

The pursuit of madness!

March Madness has ended!  More on the Madness here.

It is time then to re-post this from April 2017 ;)
*************************************************

Recall the sound bite "we need more welders and less philosophers" from back when it was the season of the Republican primaries? I wish we had engaged in a whole lot of discussion regarding that statement from Senator Marco Rubio. Instead, we collectively shrugged and moved on.

We could, and should, have used that opportunity to engage in discussions on what education ought to accomplish. If we had, then we would have agreed that we need both welders and philosophers, and that higher education is failing to deliver them.

Public higher educational institutions have suffered from extensive mission creep over the years. It is best (worst?) seen in how sports-oriented the taxpayer subsidized colleges and universities have become. Welders and philosophers are apparently way less important than athletics in the mission of higher education!

Countries where people are far more sports-crazy than we are do not waste their taxpayer monies like we do here in the US. Europeans, for instance, are maniacal about soccer, but they know well that sports is sports, and education is education. Or, consider my old country, India, where cricket is practically a religion. Colleges do not waste enormous resources on cricket and its gods.

If only we had continued to engage with the welders/philosophers soundbite, then we would have ended up talking about the wasteful practices in higher education, with athletics as perhaps the foremost waste of taxpayer money. But, of course, public institutions do not want us to talk about this, and the sports-addicted taxpayers are even less interested it seems.

A year ago, journalists in Michigan attempted to understand how much taxpayer money is spent on athletics by public institutions in their state. It was not an easy project. They “obtained through the Freedom of Information Act the financial disclosure statements provided to the NCAA from Michigan's 13 public universities that offer NCAA-level athletics.” Yes, through the Freedom of Information Act!

What they found did not surprise any of us who have been critical of this unholy mix of sports and academics in public higher education. Not only did the public institutions spend gazillions on athletics, “students are often "kept in the dark" when it comes to how universities fund college athletics and the degree to which colleges are subsidizing sports.”

Yet, whenever they cry funding shortage, universities are ready to cut philosophy before they even think of reducing the sports subsidies. I wish that legislatures, including here in Oregon with our huge budget deficit, would question the wisdom of public colleges as entertainment arenas.

The university where I have been teaching for fifteen years is no exception. A decade ago, a 25-million dollar facility was built primarily to meet the NCAA Division II requirements. Such an outrageous expense would not have been incurred if sports were played at the lower tier National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA,) in which the university participated until the year 2000.

America is exceptional indeed—when it comes to diverting taxpayer money on entertainment, when that could be spent instead on welders and philosophers. This taxpayer-supported entertainment is what the Declaration of Independence meant by "the pursuit of happiness.”

Fuck the welders and philosophers. We need entertainment, dammit!

(Am debating within myself whether I should send this to the editor, and make more enemies when published!)

Recall the sound bite "we need more welders and less philosophers" from back when it was the season of the Republican primaries? I wish we had engaged in a whole lot of discussion regarding that statement from Senator Marco Rubio. Instead, we collectively shrugged and moved on.

We could, and should, have used that opportunity to engage in discussions on what education ought to accomplish. If we had, then we would have agreed that we need both welders and philosophers, and that higher education is failing to deliver them.

Public higher educational institutions have suffered from extensive mission creep over the years. It is best (worst?) seen in how sports-oriented the taxpayer subsidized colleges and universities have become. Welders and philosophers are apparently way less important than athletics in the mission of higher education!

Countries where people are far more sports-crazy than we are do not waste their taxpayer monies like we do here in the US. Europeans, for instance, are maniacal about soccer, but they know well that sports is sports, and education is education. Or, consider my old country, India, where cricket is practically a religion. Colleges do not waste enormous resources on cricket and its gods.

If only we had continued to engage with the welders/philosophers soundbite, then we would have ended up talking about the wasteful practices in higher education, with athletics as perhaps the foremost waste of taxpayer money. But, of course, public institutions do not want us to talk about this, and the sports-addicted taxpayers are even less interested it seems.

A year ago, journalists in Michigan attempted to understand how much taxpayer money is spent on athletics by public institutions in their state. It was not an easy project. They “obtained through the Freedom of Information Act the financial disclosure statements provided to the NCAA from Michigan's 13 public universities that offer NCAA-level athletics.” Yes, through the Freedom of Information Act!

What they found did not surprise any of us who have been critical of this unholy mix of sports and academics in public higher education. Not only did the public institutions spend gazillions on athletics, “students are often "kept in the dark" when it comes to how universities fund college athletics and the degree to which colleges are subsidizing sports.”

Yet, whenever they cry funding shortage, universities are ready to ax philosophy before they even think of reducing the sports subsidies. I wish that legislatures, including here in Oregon with our huge budget deficit, would question the wisdom of public colleges as entertainment arenas.

The university where I have been teaching for fifteen years is no exception. A decade ago, a 25-million dollar facility was built primarily to meet the NCAA Division II requirements. Such an outrageous expense would not have been incurred if sports were played at the lower tier National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA,) in which the university participated until the year 2000.

America is exceptional indeed—when it comes to diverting taxpayer money on entertainment, when that could be spent instead on welders and philosophers. This taxpayer-supported entertainment is what the Declaration of Independence meant by "the pursuit of happiness.”

Trickle down works! In athletics, not economics

First an excerpt from this piece:

As professional sports grew into a multibillion-dollar enterprise, colleges followed suit. Small programs grew big; big programs grew huge, all chasing ESPN glory and cash. So, in turn, high-school athletics programs grow, emulating their big siblings on campuses.

There is a widespread consensus that our public-education systems are in serious trouble. But amid the conflicting diagnoses of the problem—teacher training, standardized testing, socioeconomic conditions—we have missed this obvious one: The growth of high-school athletics over the past generation has necessarily meant fewer resources devoted to academics, especially in the zero-sum budgetary environment of so many school districts.

Yep, the effect trickles down to high schools (and lower too?) despite any number of horrible problems at the professional and collegiate levels.

After annus horribilis 2011, no one can deny with a straight face the corrupting effect of our athletics-business complex on higher education. We need to reckon, however, with the toll that college athletics and all its trappings take on high-school education as well.

Should we then be surprised at all that our public education doesn't deliver?

Recently, American school reformers have been flocking to Finland to discover what makes their primary and secondary education so good. However, as my Ohio State colleague Kenneth Kolson wrote recently in a letter to The New York Review of Books, most of them fail to acknowledge that Finnish schools "offer no team sports, which means no 'student-athlete' hypocrisy, no cheerleaders, no pep rallies, and no architectural shrines devoted to the cult of youthful athletic prowess." He is under no illusion that the Finnish model can be replicated here.

Academics gone, .. .but sports saved!

It is amazing how tolerant we are of a system that continues to make atrocious decisions.  No, I do not mean any particular university system--it is all pervasive ...

I read this about CalState at Bakersfield, which is from where I moved to Oregon.

CSUB students, faculty sad to hear of temporary cuts to some graduate programs

That news was in the local newspaper, and to get more details I checked with the university's website.
And in the home page, the news is this item "Sports Saved!"--thanks to fundraising.

Meanwhile, there is major realignment in the Pac-10, Big-10 and other NCAA leagues, and it is all because of money--this exchange between NPR host Bob Siegel, and Dan Wetzel explains it succinctly:

SIEGEL: Why? What's driving these universities to go into these conferences?
Mr. WETZEL: Well, with college athletics, you know one thing: It's not academics, it's all money. And increasingly, athletic budgets have soared and schools are desperate to try to balance their books.
Currently, one of the really two ways to make money is television contracts. So what you're seeing are schools herding together in bigger and bigger groups to try to attract the most money possible.
SIEGEL: So who stands to win in all this and who might be the losers?
Mr. WETZEL: The people who win are the athletic directors, the college football coaches who get million-dollar salaries. It's about money. It's where is the money going. They're not paying the players. It's going to someone, and it's really going to a small group of people.

Even though this money aspect is all well known, we are supposed to pretend that it is all about amateurism.  I mean, that is exactly what the NCAA said in explaining why it was punishing USC's athletics.

Finally, here in my hometown, while, as previously noted, universities are hiking up their tuition, the gazillion dollar Nike's chief, Phil Knight, donates even more to athletics .... how much did he give recently, you ask?
It is not only how much for athletics, but the manner in which it will be done:

Knight is making yet another extraordinary gift to the UO: a 100,000-square-foot addition to the Casanova and Moshofsky centers and a new field, stands and scoreboard for soccer and lacrosse. The new building would include space for a UO Football Hall of Fame and Museum, covered parking for 300 cars, surface parking for 75 cars, a 20,000-square-foot weight room and space for ticket offices and the Duck Shop. If past is prologue, no corners will be cut when it comes to design, materials and furnishings.

The gift comes with extraordinary terms. As with the stunning new John E. Jaqua Center for Student Athletes, the university will grant a license to Phit LLC, a private group financed by Knight. The license will allow Phit to lease the property and build the projects to its specifications, and give them to the UO upon completion.

The arrangement makes it a private construction job, not subject to the usual bidding requirements for state projects, though prevailing wage rules will apply. The dollar value of the gift will not be disclosed, and the UO will be obliged to maintain the facilities and staff them with a half-dozen full-time positions. It’s an arrangement that is unique to facilities donated by Knight — unique not only at the UO, but nationwide.

The higher education board approved the project with no dissenting votes, through four of 12 members abstained. “This is an act of astonishing generosity,” Lariviere said. “And instead of celebrating that generosity, we’re analyzing it to a level of scrutiny one doesn’t expect for something such as this.”

Oh, wait, UO's president also had the following to say:

In an earlier meeting with Register-Guard editors, Lariviere said he’s “bumfuzzled” by skeptical questions about Knight’s gifts. “Do I wish he’d show the same level of support for Sanskrit? Sure,” the president said of his own academic specialty. “Am I surprised that a man who made his fortune by building the biggest sports equipment company in the world is interested in athletics? Not really.”

Lariviere would be serving the UO poorly by showing anything other than unqualified gratitude for Knight’s gifts.

Blame the system.  We can't do any damn thing.
BTW, I liked one comment I recall reading somewhere: If ever University of Oregon were to play Oklahoma State University, we ought to bill that game after their respective benefactors, Phil Knight and Boone Pickens :)

More on the deplorable state of contemporary higher education!

At the BBQ to which my neighbors/friends had invited me over, I slipped into a rather serious and depressed/depressing mode while talking about education.  It has become one giant ponzi scheme at so many levels, I told them.

Almost a day and a wonderful grilled steak and conversations later, here I am reading more during my solitary lunch break, and .... yep, more depressing stuff.  If only students would understand how much the system is sucking them dry!

Exhibit A: This WSJ report that "Only 49% of graduates from the classes of 2009 to 2011 had found a full-time job within a year of finishing school, compared with 73% for students who graduated in the three years prior."  Despite a plethora of such reports, students don't seem to care, and I have often wondered why.  Could there be a great deal of truth in the report's simplistic/sarcastic comment?:

Many students nonetheless express optimism, though perhaps that's simply the Lake Wobegon effect: They might believe they're all above-average after years of positive reinforcement from their parents. In the same vein, they may see themselves as exceptions to the rules of the job market.

And then there is the whole aspect of athletics versus academics. 

We might even cut down the number of classes we offer, and reduce the numbers of full-time instructors, but never shall we even marginally reduce our commitment to athletics.  It is similar to the maniacal Republicans adamantly holding the line on military budget.  Exhibit B: This Bloomberg report on the supremacy of athletics at public institutions:

Rutgers funneled $28.5 million from the university budget and student fees into sports, the most among 54 U.S. public universities in the biggest football conferences, based on data compiled by Bloomberg for the fiscal year ended last June. It was at least the second straight year at the top of the list for the state university of New Jersey, despite cost-cutting after lawmakers and faculty protested that academics were losing out.
(To see Bloomberg’s data on sports spending at Rutgers and 53 other schools, click here.)
“Rutgers puts too much money into athletics at the cost of basically every other department,” said Stephen Sweeney, the Democratic president of the New Jersey Senate, in an e-mail. He applauded efforts by Athletic Director Tim Pernetti to increase revenue. At the same time, he said, “the faculty, student body and the families of students who are supporting them through school simply pay too much.” 

So, ok, those are at the undergrad levels. The typical cure offered by the higher education industry is, well, more schooling. So, we then have excited people going in for PhDs in fields like history, which is Exhibit C:


If it were not for the fact that it is a brilliantly sunny and warm spring day, this would be one hell of a depressing Monday!

A university associated with the Oregon Ducks?

A neighbor says this joke at get togethers almost always.  But, it is not tiresome to listen to it though.  The joke?  "Hey, I just found out the other day that there is an university in town, with a whole lot of buildings too, with the same name as the Oregon Ducks football team" 

Yes, ha ha, indeed.  As much as a sports fan as any average American, this neighbor is unhappy with the huge amount of resources and attention that the university's athletics programs--football and basketball in particular--receive.  Well, he has a number of fellow travellers, including me.

Nathan Tublitz, a biology professor at the university, has a sharp op-ed in the paper.  He writes there:

The University of Oregon recently triggered this reaction by rescheduling the 2010 June Commencement Ceremonies to accommodate the NCAA national track and field championships.

Move graduation for a track meet?

This decision to prioritize athletics over academics, inconveniencing thousands of students and their parents, might have been excusable were it not the latest in a long line of similar decisions. For example, the Athletic Department’s current football plans include moving the Civil War game to the Saturday before exam week, holding more Thursday night games, and establishing an annual Thanksgiving Day rivalry game against the University of Washington Huskies. Never mind that students need to study for finals, attend Friday classes, or spend Thanksgiving with their families. Oregon athletics and the university administration are again reaching for a quick payout at the expense of academic quality and institutional integrity.

The insanity in (of) higher education--Oregon edition!

I so wish I had not picked up early in my life the bad habit of reading the newspaper every morning.  Life would have been so much easier.

Even though my eyes got to the headlines even as I picked up the paper from the porch, I had all the more the reasons to keep it for the last.  You would have done the same too when the headline blared:

UO begins a new era of bargaining
A sea change arrives as a union forms and oversight shifts

After reading through the comics pages (which were a dud!); the local pages (lots of dog-bites-man stories!); sports (Dodgers on top in the division!); opinions (nothing by me, so who cares!) I finally got to the front section and the main story:

It’s a cash problem.
“In most states, the legislators — along with the federal government — have reduced (support) and the proportion of their budget that goes to higher education,” Boris said.
That’s true in Oregon.
The state has steadily decreased its support for its universities over the past two decades until Oregon student tuition pays the lion’s share of the cost — 70 percent — while the state pays 30 percent, according to Oregon University System figures.
Scrambling for money became a way of life at the University of Oregon.

 So far, so good, right?  Finally, a recognition of the bottom-line that "it's a cash problem."

So, what are they gonna do about it?

Fasten your seat-belts. In case you feel queasy, look away from your computer and keyboard.

Ready?

Contributions from the university’s general fund to athletics has long been a bone of contention with UO faculty. The athletic department gets much of its revenue from sales of tickets and television broadcasting rights.
This past week, administrative bargainers handed the union documents confirming that the university — as opposed to the athletic department — pays about $2 million annually to provide special tutoring to student athletes exclusively at the John E. Jaqua Center for Student Athletes, the shimmering glass building at the campus entrance.
That amounts to roughly $4,000 per student athlete; the university spends a fraction of that for special tutoring of non-athlete students. In May, the university senate formally asked Gottfredson to require the athletic department to pay for the tutoring at the Jaqua Center.
At the bargaining table last week, the union’s professional negotiator, David Cecil, told the administration’s professional negotiator, Sharon Rudnick, he would evaluate the university spending on tutoring student athletes.
“We’ll let you know if we think it’s a wise investment,” he said.
Gleason said the union is entitled to an opinion, but the decision is management’s to make. 

You read that correctly.  Everybody recognizes that there is a cash problem. But, dammit, there is no way we are going to touch that expense item on athletics.  

Wait, there is more.  

That was the insanity from the management side that it was their decision to make, even if the investment in athletics is an unwise one.  Faculty can be insane too--after all, we faculty didn't pursue our doctorates for nothing, and typically the deans and presidents were once faculty!

 United Academics of the University of Oregon wants 16 percent increases in spending on faculty salaries over the two years for the 1,900 members in its bargaining unit. In the past week, the administration offered 10.5 percent. “That’s the one that’s the greatest challenge for all of us,” said Tim Gleason, dean of the School of Journalism and Communications and an administration bargaining team member.
The union’s proposal would cost the university $20 million more than the current two-year budget for faculty salaries. The administration’s proposal would be $14 million more — a $6 million difference, according to the administration’s figures.

16 percent. 10.5 percent. Oh well, we might as well give them a 20 percent raise. 

Oh, wait. Whatever happened to the bottom-line:

It’s a cash problem.

I suppose we can pay-it-forward!

More on athletics versus education

Two items from the same issue (Sep 29th) of the newspaper:
First on athletics:

Chip Kelly, University of Oregon make a $20.5 million deal with new contract | Six-year deal puts Chip Kelly among the highest-paid coaches in the nation

And now on education:

The Oregon University System presents the state’s next governor and Legislature with a welcome opportunity. It’s understood that all state programs, including higher education, can expect less state support in the next budget period and beyond. Oregon’s universities, however, believe they can perform as well as in the past or better, even with stagnant or declining state funding, if Salem would give them more flexibility in managing their own affairs.

So, ... let me see. Despite all the tight controls that the state has on the little resources it allocates, universities find enough and more millions to spend on athletics.  And, they expect people like to me to believe that their spending on educating students will improve if only those controls would be released.  Oh yeah, it so excites me as a taxpayer that academics will suddenly become the overwhelming priority.  As a faculty member, I am ecstatic about total independence for state universities. (editor: can you be anymore sarcastic?!)

Oh, in case you thought this was the story only at the large schools in the system, I want to remind myself about this from the president of the smaller, regional, university where I am employed:

In 2008-09, university support accounted for more than half of the $4 million athletic budget this past year, reaching $2.2 million from just less than $900,000 in 2006.

Let us see when the highly entertained taxpayers wake up to reality that the joke that is on them on so many levels ...

No money. Yet, new academic programs and hires? Screw the students, eh :(

I used to be a contributor to the university's Foundation.  Yes, “used to be.”

Over the recent years, I have come to understand that the university has sharply deviated from a focus on the education and success of students and has, instead, pursued, and continues to pursue, a calculated strategy of treating the university as a business enterprise and is failing at that as well.

The clincher for me was in the summer of 2010 when I read in the Statesman Journal the following statement by the previous president:

Since moving from NAIA to NCAA Division II in 2000, Western Oregon University has been adjusting to the economic realities of competing at a higher level.  More money was needed for scholarships, travel and increased investment in facilities, such as the new Health and Wellness Center opening this year, that will relocate the football team from the Old PE Building on campus.

Occam’s Razor principle offers a different adjustment to the economic realities: put an end to the financial disaster that the NCAA Division II requirements cause, and return athletics to the ranks of the NAIA.  Such a practical response would have then precluded the multiple millions of taxpayer and student dollars that went into an expensive facility that is far more luxurious than most local gyms, and for which students are now mandated to pay a fee every term, whether or not they patronize it.

So, that summer, I decided to cancel my small monthly contribution to the university's advancement and, thereby, stop enabling such wasteful and unnecessary expenditures.

Since then the economic conditions have not significantly improved in the state and the country.  Against such a background, was a near simultaneous reporting in the local media about:

• The possible end to the tuition promise—because of the need to balance the university’s budget;
• The renegotiation of staff compensation, which included belt-tightening measures and furlough days; and
• A six percent salary increase over two years for faculty (including me)

Here again, I am struck by the contradictions. When economic conditions are unfavorable, and are expected to be so for a couple of more years at least, triggering the university to abandon the idea of holding tuition constant , I would think that there will not be money for faculty pay raises.  In an email to the campus, the president noted that "WOU will realize deficits this biennium in excess of $5 million. This is after removing $2 million of costs from the budget" and yet the investments in faculty and facilities for newly initiated undergraduate and graduate programs.

At the end of it all, it seems highly likely then that all these wasteful expenditures in athletics and academics alike will result in students facing significant increases in tuition and fees, yet again, in the coming years.

It is not that economic conditions worsened only a few months ago and that we have been caught unprepared—it is now four years of doldrums as a result of the Great Recession, on top of the trend of decreasing allocation from the state over the years.  I worry that the university is not being prudent, especially in its social contract with taxpayers, and students and their families.  Even more worrisome is the distinct possibility that all these are being played out at other universities too!

But, who cares for what I think, right? 

Don't ignore inefficiencies in private sector, either

There is a great deal of truth in the increasingly popular sentiment that the compensation levels for government employees have become distorted, more so during this Great Recession. But such distortions are prevalent in the private sector too.

I do not mean to deny the problem in the public sector. My graduate school professor, who has semi-retired now, often joked that he became a libertarian because of his experiences when working as a student intern with the Los Angeles County government — and this was 40-some summers ago.

In my own experience as a student intern and later as a full-timer with different government agencies in California, I did encounter employees who did not seem to be delivering service that was equivalent to their high salaries. In the decade since I returned to academia, one of my former employers has practically doubled the number of people on its payroll.

But such issues are not only a characteristic of the public sector; they plague the private sector as well. When it is a small business, like the one my neighbor owns, it is quite easy to maximize efficiency. But as organizations get larger (much to our displeasure as consumers and taxpayers), wastes do arise. Various forms of economic inefficiencies, of which compensation levels are one, are characteristic of large organizations — private, public and even nonprofits.

Academics and management experts have been studying these issues for a long time. A fellow graduate student — also from India — did his doctorate in "organizational behavior" and focused on such inefficiencies. The interesting irony was that until we met in Los Angeles as new graduate students, we didn't know that we had worked for the same employer in India, Indian Oxygen Limited, after which, naturally, we shared many jokes about the wasteful practices at the firm.

Perhaps it is easy to go after public sector compensation because it is the metaphorical fruit lying on the ground. But, while bending down to pick these up, are we overlooking far plumper fruits in the private sector?

A typical argument for ignoring the inefficiencies in the private sector is that options exist for us consumers, while as taxpayers we have no alternative but the government, which is a monopoly; i.e., if we do not like, for instance, a multinational company's wasteful approaches, then we can stop patronizing that business and move to somebody else. However, as we find with the oil companies, there is rarely a difference between large firms, which means that there isn't really a choice for us consumers — it is tweedledum or tweedledee.

Finally, looking at inefficient resource allocations within my own world of higher education, I would rather that we target first the ever-increasing expensive spending for athletics. It is not even news anymore that often college coaches earn far more than corporate CEOs.

But this is a losing battle. After all, even my left-leaning faculty colleagues love sports to the extent of organizing betting pools during "March Madness." I suppose we are stuck with inefficiencies that we don't like!

Published in the Statesman Journal, August 14, 2010

Update: In addition to the comments in the newspaper's page itself, the following is a verbatim copy/paste from a university email (I have "x"ed out the name) in response to my op-ed:

Dear Colleagues:  I invite you to read the latest editorical by Sriram Khe which appeared in the Statesman-Journal on Saturday (8/14/10).  It is in the Mid-Valley section as part of the regular editorial page.  It is about "inefficiencies" in the public and private sectors, although the term is never defined.  He refers to the inefficiencies in higher education particularly manifest in collegiate athletics.  Now we all know about excesses and corruption in intercollegiate sports, especially at the Division I level.  But the editorial gets better and the author makes an interesting claim.  Khe asserts that his "left-wing colleagues" who run "betting pools during March Madness" are somehow part of the inevitability of inefficiencies in higher education.  I presume that this means that if his colleagues are college basketball fans and participate in a division betting pool, then we either support or are oblivious to inefficiences in higher education.  There are many possible responses to this preposterous assertion.  Let me suggest just one.  My "left-wing" colleagues and I are all serious and at times even severe critics of excess and corruption in all levels of sports.  Most of this occurs at Division I and involves the intrusion of commercial capital, particularly in the form of television contracts.  This has nothing to do with intercollegiate sports at WOU, a Division II program.  At WOU, intercollegiate sports is used to recruit student-athletes and train teacher-coaches for mostly public school systems.  Does this sound inefficient to you?  Most student-athletes at WOU are not on scholarship and participate for the love of sport and as part of their future educational goals.  Does this sound inefficient to you?  So where is the "inefficiency" connection between sports at WOU and left-wing faculty participating in a ritual of March Madness??  You probably know that President Obama is also a college basketball fan and also participated in a "betting pool."  I wonder if Fox Television (Glenn Beck!?) will follow Khe and accuse President Obama of fostering inefficiences because he is like the "left-wing" faculty in Social Science. 

All the best, Comrade Bxxx  

In sports and politics, winning at all costs is ruining us!

It is the political campaign season, and the beginning of another academic sports year.  Thus, an appropriate time to re-run the following commentary of mine, which was originally published in the Register Guard on May 27, 2008:

Flicking through the television channels the other day, I paused at a basketball playoff game between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Utah Jazz, which was such a close one that it eventually was settled in overtime.

The commentator made interesting remarks that are quite the norm in such contexts, analyzing who was in foul trouble and how many fouls each team had “left to give.”

Fouls left to give? There is no more talk of sports promoting sportsmanship, camaraderie and cooperation. Instead, it is about “fouls left to give” until players are ejected.

Increasingly, fouls and penalties are no longer results of players’ accidents or mistakes. Coaches and players systematically exploit this as a loophole with the sole intention of restricting the opponent’s performance.

It is not uncommon to see a basketball player intentionally grabbing an opposing team’s player if that will prevent a sure two points.

It is so often used against Shaquille O’Neal that we now have the sports jargon, “hack-a-Shaq.” A football cornerback might commit pass interference if it appears that without that penalty the wide receiver might coast into the end zone for a touchdown.

The manner in which fans respond to these fouls indicates that they, too, see it as legitimate maneuvering.

I wonder, then, if involvement in athletics might end up doing more harm than good. What will children learn if their coach teaches them to grab the player in order to prevent an opponent from scoring? Is the lesson to focus on winning at any cost, fully understanding that they have “fouls to give”?

It is bizarre that we have zero-tolerance policies in educational settings, even as we could instruct the same children that they have “fouls to give” on the playground.

It is no stretch to argue that this notion of “fouls to give” is becoming common in society.

The havoc that Enron brought upon its employees, shareholders and the rest of the world was nothing but a reflection of its decision-makers’ thinking that their transgressions were within their “fouls to give.” Professionals advise corporations on how to exploit loopholes in the law — a variation of fouls to give.

Political campaigning is along the same lines: Candidates or their surrogates intentionally commit fouls, then pay appropriate penalties and carry on, because, hey, that is how the game is played.

As an academic concerned about more than mere curricular issues, I am always perturbed when students and colleagues commit fouls. You can, therefore, imagine my sheer delight with the recent softball incident in a game between Central Washington University and Western Oregon University, where I teach.

In case you missed that news item: A lot was at stake because the winner of that game qualified for the regionals. With two on base, at the plate was a diminutive graduating Western senior who had never homered in her life. She hit her first home run ever, then badly injured her knee at first base while making her way around the bases.

Two fielders from Central carried her around the bases, which counted as a home run for Western. The gregarious Central team went on to the lose the game, while Western moved on to the regionals, and won the first round there, too.

It was a remarkable story of sportsmanship and offered an absolute contrast to the “fouls to give” calculations that are otherwise the norm.

In the spirit of using athletics to forge a greater sense of humanity, imagine the following scenario, which might sound as if it is coming from another planet. Well, given that I am from India, it might well be an alien thought!

The next academic year, when the Oregon Ducks play hosts to Pac-10 football teams at the loud and boisterous Autzen Stadium, it will almost always be a midday or late afternoon game. That means that there will be ample time for the Ducks to play a different type of host again: to sit down with the visiting team and have dinner after the game. The bands from the host and visiting teams can play a few numbers as entertainment for the evening.

An outrageous idea, I realize. But what a powerful message it can convey, particularly to the youth! The university even can make a fundraiser out of this, splitting the proceeds with the visiting teams.

It would be a huge step in the right direction. The focus, after all, is on the common cause of developing one’s skills and learning and playing the game to one’s fullest. I can easily imagine that such an attitude will quickly lead to players and spectators alike relearning the forgotten idea that there is no place for “fouls to give.”

In my book, nice guys never finish last, but are winners all the time.

Amateurism in college football? HA!

The co-chairs of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics want us to believe that college football is amateur sport. To which I say: HA!

In their op-ed in the LA Times, Chancellor William E. Kirwan of the University of Maryland system, and President R. Gerald Turner of Southern Methodist University, write: This week also marks the start of a new era in college football, one in which fantasy leagues run by commercial entities exploit college players as their virtual game pieces. These online fantasy leagues, which use the real names and statistics of collegiate athletes, raise a crucial question for higher education leaders: Is it amateurism in college sports that has become a fantasy?

In case they did not know, amateurism became a fantasy a long, long time ago. Remember Robert Maynard Hutchins as the University of Chicago president? Here is a reminder: "In 1935, senior Jay Berwanger was awarded the first Heisman Trophy (which is proudly displayed today in the Ratner Athletic Center on campus). Just four years later, however, Hutchins abolished the football team, citing the need for Chicago to focus on academics rather than athletics." To paraphrase Don McLean, that was the day that universities recognized that amateurism in college football was long dead.

The cynic in me thinks that Kirwan and Turner, and the NCAA, are merely upset that others are making money from college football--perhaps they think that only universities can make money from it. HA!

College Football: A tale of two universities

It was such a pleasure to read this op-ed by Barry Glassner, who is the president of Lewis and Clark College here in Oregon. He writes about being smitten with Division III sports, and notes:

Division III schools emphasize the experience of the athletes, not the sports-consuming public. The NCAA specifically calls on us to "place special importance on the impact of athletics on the participants rather than on the spectators ... and the general public and its entertainment needs."
...
On D-III playing fields, student-athletes really are student-athletes. At this level, no one gets athletic scholarships. Students compete not for fame and big crowds, not for a shot at a pro career, but purely for the fun, excitement and educational benefits they derive.

This is what most of us imagined colleges and universities to be--environments where there is enough opportunity to engage the body along with the engaging life of the mind.

In contrast, the former president of the university where I teach justified the gazillion dollar expenditures on athletics-related items:

Since moving from NAIA to NCAA Division II in 2000, Western Oregon University has been adjusting to the economic realities of competing at a higher level.More money was needed for scholarships, travel and increased investment in facilities, such as the new Health and Wellness Center opening this year, that will relocate the football team from the Old PE Building on campus.

Perhaps Division III was no good for us?  Even though it is immensely more than good enough for Lewis and Clark?

Spending on athletics in public universities: need for a lemon law!

In 2008-09, university support accounted for more than half of the $4 million athletic budget this past year, reaching $2.2 million from just less than $900,000 in 2006.

This news item wouldn't matter if it were a report on a private university.  But, at the taxpayer supported institution that is also my employer?

I don't want my tax dollars to be spent  wasted this way, when students at the same university pay the highest per-credit tuition rate in the system--even more than at the research universities!  And, when there is very little on the horizon to suggest that the state's economic picture will get better any time soon.

So, why all these expenses anyway?

Since moving from NAIA to NCAA Division II in 2000, Western Oregon University has been adjusting to the economic realities of competing at a higher level.More money was needed for scholarships, travel and increased investment in facilities, such as the new Health and Wellness Center opening this year, that will relocate the football team from the Old PE Building on campus.

Well, wouldn't it have made economic sense then to have stayed in NAIA and, therefore, not have incurred all these additional expenses?  "It's elementary, my dear Watson."

To a large extent, universities--yes, academics, too, and not merely athletics--reflect decision-making and resource allocations that result from information asymmetry as best illustrated through the lemons (defective cars) sold, which is also why we have lemon laws.  In contrast to the automobile consumer market, however, the public has no clue about the defects in the lemons here--higher education--and has to pay whatever the asking price is, and is stuck with the purchased product.  In case the public has questions, the people who can clarify that are also from, guess what, higher education. ...  

Students ignore their debts as long as their athletic teams win?

This blog post on the tax we are effectively imposing on the younger generation attracted quite a few visits, according the site traffic data.  I commented there, rather sarcastically, that:

The youth are paying big time for all our irresponsible decisions. But, youth being youth, their focus might not be in the metaphorical screw but in the literal one, and it will be a while before they will realize how much we have messed them up!

I should have noted there that jingoistic athletic worship distracts students as much as, or even more than, sex does.  How else could one explain students not only failing to protest against data--like the in map below, which is about the highest paid public employees in each state--but that they actually support increasing expenditure on athletics even though that only adds to their financial obligations come graduation?

As noted in the source for that map, such an allocation of money means:

This is money that is overwhelmingly going to field football, baseball, lacrosse, and other sports teams. It's not going to create new sections of Biology 101 or English 251 or underwrite the discovery of the next Streptomycin or publish the next Economics and the Public Interest or anything that remotely comes close to education or research.

I simply cannot understand how the public and elected officials alike can continue to engage in such a moronic and wasteful use of scarce resources that is not doing anything productive to make future generations richer and wiser!

In fact, it is the other way around: there is an athletic arms race.  

The trend begins with the broadest comparison possible in Division I – the more-elite FBS programs vs. the smaller, less-wealthy FCS ones. While the cost of instruction rose 53.3 and 48.2 percent at FBS and FCS institutions, respectively, and tuition rose 54.6 and 47.0 percent, instructional salaries increased only 15.8 and 14.14 percent. Total athletic coach salaries, meanwhile, rose 67.1 and 59.4 percent, and football coaches’ salaries rose even faster: 80.8 and 61.9 percent.
Narrow that down to the most elite of the elite, and the difference becomes even more stark. In the Bowl Championship Series conferences, whose champions automatically qualify for a slot in one of the five BCS bowl games, instructional salaries rose 15.8 percent – which, as it happens, is 1.7 percent higher than the increase at FCS programs. But total athletic coach salaries rose 78.4 percent, and football coach salaries rose 96.6 percent.

These are the few occasions when I allow myself to say this: Fuck!!!

“Presidents should really start asking the question, what is the purpose for athletics on my campus"

Oh yeah?  Good luck with that!

Meanwhile, students continue to pay for tuition and fees and don't even bother showing up for classes and don't care to turn in assignments.  What the heck is going on?

It is all beginning to show up in the real world:  

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, in a new study, found that 30-year-olds with student loans were now less likely to have debts like home mortgages than 30-year-olds without student loans — even though most of those with student loans are better educated and can expect to earn more money over their lifetimes. The same pattern holds true for 25-year-olds and car loans. 

“It is a new thing, a big social experiment that we’ve accidentally decided to engage in,” said Kevin Carey, the director of the Education Policy Program at the New America Foundation, a research group based in Washington. “Let’s send a whole class of people out into their professional lives with a negative net worth. Not starting at zero, but starting at a minus that is often measured in the tens of thousands of dollars. Those minus signs have psychological impact, I suspect. They might have a dollars-and-cents impact in what you can afford, too.” 

The weak economy and tight credit standards remain the main culprits preventing young people just establishing themselves from making major purchases. But millions now face putting a substantial share of their take-home pay toward past debts rather than present needs. Student loan debt leaves them with less money for things like clothes and restaurant meals. And it is even more likely to suppress purchases of more expensive items that need to be bought with credit. A poor job market is compounding the problem

Who cares, right, as long as the athletic monster is well fed?  Let me use that word once more: Fuck!!!

The madness of rock-climbing walls

It is March Madness here in the US, and this means nothing to the rest of the world--as it should be.  In fact, I would rather that there were no March Madness even here in the US!

March Madness is when people can engage in betting in their work places.  It is when even the uber-left professors* will forget how the system screws the folk.  It is college basketball championship rounds.  Supposedly an amateur event, there are billions to made by corporations, the NCAA, the coaches, and the universities.

Apparently having good sports teams and athletics facilities are all that really matter in the part of higher education to which people really do not have to engage in fraud in order to get admission!  Because, once you have those, then students come in even from afar, from outside the state. And, getting those out-of-state students is a big moneymaker for publicly-supported universities, which otherwise won't be able to fund the multi-million dollar compensation for coaches!

So, these universities fall over each other in order to recruit students from other states.  Often, these out-of-state students are also less-capable ones who "had been rejected by their home flagships."; the more capable are able to find seats in their own states, which makes tuition more affordable.

And, what exactly are these less-capable students looking for?  Ahem, ""What these less-than-top-notch scholars may be most interested in ... are amenities like rock-climbing gyms and lazy rivers."

Such is the state of "higher" education in the country!

Even our small school spent a nauseating amount of money in order to build a flashy new gym with a rock-climbing wall and an indoor pool.  I blogged about this back in 2011--eight years ago.

A few months ago, I wrote to the university's budget committee that the university should rethink its allocation for athletics.  Guess what happened?  They did not consider it worth discussing.

* Years ago, in a newspaper op-ed I included a comment on how even leftist faculty are all in support of college sports.  Ooooh, I touched a raw nerve ;)  A loud leftist faculty wrote in a campus distribution list (which included me) linking me and Faux News' glenn beck ... hahahahaha

Are academic deans furious and waxing wroth over the latest athletic scandal?

The athletics-driven higher education is finally in some serious shit.
Way past time.
But at least now.

What happened, you ask?

For 18 years, thousands of students at the prestigious University of North Carolina took fake "paper classes," and advisers funneled athletes into the program to keep them eligible, according to a scathing independent report released Wednesday. ...
In all, the report estimates, at least 3,100 students took the paper classes, but the figure "very likely falls far short of the true number."

If ever one needed a metaphorical smoking gun in order to take the issue seriously, well, now there is no denying it.

"As an athlete, we weren't really there for an education," Rashad McCants, the second-leading scorer on the championship University of North Carolina basketball team 10 years ago, told CNN's Carol Costello. "You get a scholarship to the university to play basketball," he said. In other words, the point wasn't for him to actually learn. That's just sad.
"The university makes money off us athletes," McCants told Costello, "and they give us this fake education as a distraction." When McCants first made these remarks, university representatives tried to shoot the messenger, attacking him and his credibility.

Remember the lawsuits against the NCAA that colleges and the sports body were simply making money off the students who were hired under the guise of "student-athletes" but were, ahem, not students and only athletes?  The whole thing is a "subversion of the academy":

 The NCAA is a cartel of the major athletic universities in the United States that sets wages, playing conditions, and other aspects of intercollegiate athletics. Most prominently of these is a restriction on payments to football and basketball players. These two sports create billions of dollars in local and national revenues via gate receipts, TV contracts, and ancillary merchandise, not to mention millions of dollars annually at member schools in donations by alumni and other supporters of athletic programs.

It is a tangled web that was woven at UNC.  A web that involved even a, wait for it, ethics professor!  Yep, an ethics professor, who "directed the university’s Parr Center for Ethics," was totally in the middle of this scandal!

The president of Macalaster College is furious:

this is not fundamentally an issue about sports but about the basic academic integrity of an institution. Any accrediting agency that would overlook a violation of this magnitude would both delegitimize itself and appear hopelessly hypocritical if it attempted, now or in the future, to threaten or sanction institutions—generally those with much less wealth and influence—for violations much smaller in scale.
Most of us work very hard to conform to the standards imposed by our regional accrediting agencies and the federal government. If falsified grades and transcripts for more than 3,000 students over more than a decade are viewed as anything other than an egregious violation of those standards, my response to the whole accreditation process is simple: Why bother?

Exactly!  Why bother with real work?  I agree with him that the university should lose its accreditation until it is able to convince us that the grades mean something.

The crime involves fundamental academic integrity. The response, regardless of the visibility or reputation or wealth of the institution, should be to suspend accredited status until there is evidence that an appropriate level of integrity is both culturally and structurally in place.
Anything less would be dismissive of the many institutions whose transcripts actually have meaning.

Of course, that will not happen.  Because, dammit, that won't happen!  After all, this ain't anything new :(

A possible lesson from Covid: Sports is sports, and education is education

Two months ago, in May 2020, which seems like two decades in the age of the coronavirus, I wrote in this post:

In response to COVID-19, if higher education is forced to stay focused on its mission and reduce its extravagant expenses on athletics, then it will be one of the few benefits to come out of this global catastrophe.

Ahem.  It could happen.

First was an announcement from the Ivy League, which became the first Division I conference to suspend football for the fall:

The presidents said in a statement that sports could not be played under campus-wide policies that include restrictions on student and staff travel, social distancing requirements and limits on group gatherings.
“With the information available to us today regarding the continued spread of the virus, we simply do not believe we can create and maintain an environment for intercollegiate athletic competition that meets our requirements for safety and acceptable levels of risk,” the statement read.

Of course, Harvard and Yale are not the champs who win the ultimate prize.

And then the Ivy on the west coast, Stanford, had more news:

Stanford will discontinue 11 of our varsity sports programs at the conclusion of the 2020-21 academic year: men’s and women’s fencing, field hockey, lightweight rowing, men’s rowing, co-ed and women’s sailing, squash, synchronized swimming, men’s volleyball and wrestling.

Yes, synchronized swimming.  You read that correctly.

And you know well where you have watched synchronized swimming.  In Hail, Caesar ;)



Ok, you perhaps have not watched that movie.  But, surely in the summer Olympics. Yes?

In the US, universities are the prep schools for wannabe Olympians!  And, Stanford is a leader in that:

USC topped the list at every Summer Games from 1928 through 1964 (tied with Cal in 1948). UCLA’s run went from 1968 through 2004. Stanford had the most in 2008, 2012 and 2016.

Now, it does not mean that Stanford coaches only US athletes for the Olympics.  Nope.   Athletes come from all over the world to "study" at American universities so that they can get access to all kinds of personnel and infrastructure support.  Remember the scene in Bend It Like Beckham where the young women celebrate getting the soccer scholarship to an American university?

This bizarre aspect of American higher education investing gazillions on athletics is truly an awful American Exceptionalism!  I will quote this again:

In no other country’s university system, after all, does sports play anything like the central role it does in American academic life. Men do not go to Oxford to play cricket; the Sorbonne does not field a nationally celebrated soccer team. Even in the most sports-mad countries, sports is sports and education is education. That’s a better system.

Will the novel coronavirus eventually lead American universities to a better system?  I am not holding my breath on that!

Sportsmanship should supplant foul ethics

Published in The Register-Guard, May 27, 2008

Flicking through the television channels the other day, I paused at a basketball playoff game between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Utah Jazz, which was such a close one that it eventually was settled in overtime.

The commentator made interesting remarks that are quite the norm in such contexts, analyzing who was in foul trouble and how many fouls each team had “left to give.”

Fouls left to give? There is no more talk of sports promoting sportsmanship, camaraderie and cooperation. Instead, it is about “fouls left to give” until players are ejected.

Increasingly, fouls and penalties are no longer results of players’ accidents or mistakes. Coaches and players systematically exploit this as a loophole with the sole intention of restricting the opponent’s performance.

It is not uncommon to see a basketball player intentionally grabbing an opposing team’s player if that will prevent a sure two points.

It is so often used against Shaquille O’Neal that we now have the sports jargon, “hack-a-Shaq.” A football cornerback might commit pass interference if it appears that without that penalty the wide receiver might coast into the end zone for a touchdown.

The manner in which fans respond to these fouls indicates that they, too, see it as legitimate maneuvering.

I wonder, then, if involvement in athletics might end up doing more harm than good. What will children learn if their coach teaches them to grab the player in order to prevent an opponent from scoring? Is the lesson to focus on winning at any cost, fully understanding that they have “fouls to give”?

It is bizarre that we have zero-tolerance policies in educational settings, even as we could instruct the same children that they have “fouls to give” on the playground.

It is no stretch to argue that this notion of “fouls to give” is becoming common in society.

The havoc that Enron brought upon its employees, shareholders and the rest of the world was nothing but a reflection of its decision-makers’ thinking that their transgressions were within their “fouls to give.” Professionals advise corporations on how to exploit loopholes in the law — a variation of fouls to give.

Political campaigning is along the same lines: Candidates or their surrogates intentionally commit fouls, then pay appropriate penalties and carry on, because, hey, that is how the game is played.
As an academic concerned about more than mere curricular issues, I am always perturbed when students and colleagues commit fouls. You can, therefore, imagine my sheer delight with the recent softball incident in a game between Central Washington University and Western Oregon University, where I teach.

In case you missed that news item: A lot was at stake because the winner of that game qualified for the regionals. With two on base, at the plate was a diminutive graduating Western senior who had never homered in her life. She hit her first home run ever, then badly injured her knee at first base while making her way around the bases.

Two fielders from Central carried her around the bases, which counted as a home run for Western. The gregarious Central team went on to the lose the game, while Western moved on to the regionals, and won the first round there, too.

It was a remarkable story of sportsmanship and offered an absolute contrast to the “fouls to give” calculations that are otherwise the norm.

In the spirit of using athletics to forge a greater sense of humanity, imagine the following scenario, which might sound as if it is coming from another planet. Well, given that I am from India, it might well be an alien thought!

The next academic year, when the Oregon Ducks play hosts to Pac-10 football teams at the loud and boisterous Autzen Stadium, it will almost always be a midday or late afternoon game. That means that there will be ample time for the Ducks to play a different type of host again: to sit down with the visiting team and have dinner after the game. The bands from the host and visiting teams can play a few numbers as entertainment for the evening.

An outrageous idea, I realize. But what a powerful message it can convey, particularly to the youth! The university even can make a fundraiser out of this, splitting the proceeds with the visiting teams.

It would be a huge step in the right direction. The focus, after all, is on the common cause of developing one’s skills and learning and playing the game to one’s fullest. I can easily imagine that such an attitude will quickly lead to players and spectators alike relearning the forgotten idea that there is no place for “fouls to give.”

In my book, nice guys never finish last, but are winners all the time.