In a Jan. 14 guest commentary published in the Register-Guard, two University professors, Nathan Tublitz and James Earl, questioned the priorities of the University vis a vis funding. At the center of their column was the argument that the University places a greater emphasis on Athletic Department funding than on academic funding.
The timing of the guest commentary comes at a curious time. Tublitz and Earl mention that outgoing Athletic Director Bill Moos is receiving a $2 million negotiated severance payout. And, at the University and across the nation, Athletic Departments continue to reap financial gains at a level seemingly incommensurate with their academic counterparts. In recent years, however, California-based philanthropist Lorry Lokey has donated $50 million to the University. This money has gone to the College of Education, the MarAbel B. Frohnmayer Music School, and the School of Journalism and Communication. Lokey and the administrators announced his most recent donation of $15 million last week; the money will be used to fund scientific research.
There are approximately 40 Athletic Departments that claim monetary self-sufficiency. The University of Oregon’s Athletic Department was one of the first to travel that road, thanks to influential corporate donors like Nike. Regardless of how students may feel about Nike’s products, its business practices or its powerful CEO, University alumnus Phil Knight, its gifts to the Athletic Department alleviate the financial burden of a tuition-financed Athletic Department.
“The overemphasis on athletics extends even to fund-raising,” write Tublitz and Earl. But what do Tublitz and Earl mean when they bemoan an “overemphasis” in Athletic Department funding? If the Athletic Department is primarily self-sufficient, then it must raise funds in order to remain self-sufficient. One can view the Athletic Department’s excessive spending as unsavory, but it hardly represents a threat to the academic purity of the University – especially if its funding remains self-initiated.
So the question remains: Where do the University’s priorities lie? Drawing a dichotomous relationship between academic fundraising and athletic fundraising doesn’t solve anything because it doesn’t address the inherent problem of higher education funding, which has become a sort of hustle. In the long run, this is still a more amenable funding model than siphoning tuition dollars to athletic programs.
“It is worse than ironic that our academic rankings are dropping as our football rankings rise,” write Tublitz and Earl. This isn’t irony. And it certainly isn’t “worse than ironic.” The situation is easily explainable. Both the Athletic Department and the University as a whole are businesses. The Athletic Department succeeds because its deep-pocketed donors want it to succeed. As a business, it has built its model in such a way that it does not negatively affect tuition-paying students.
What, exactly, would mollify these professors? A never-ending flow of money and resources? Lear Jets equipped with the latest Bose stereo equipment? Money is important to education, and to what extent the University gets this money is a question whose answer is more complicated than what has been presented in recent years.
Perhaps we live in the Gilded Age of academia – an era when academia faces a litany of contradictions and fiscal intemperance. But one should not use athletics as a scapegoat for poor academic funding. It’s a complicated issue that requires complicated thinking.
Professors’ letter addressed wrong problems
Daily Emerald
January 18, 2007
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