October 11, 2007
Shockingly Unshocking! Academics and Athletics
Although the two disciplines/domains start with the same letter (Academics and Athletics) and reside on the same campus, there is apparently a disconnect! Shocking! From the Chronicle of Higher Education comes a new report, titled Faculty Feel 'Disconnected' from College Sports, Think Some Coaches' Salaries are Excessive.
A "striking number" of professors involved in governance at universities with high-profile athletics programs say they are disconnected from and do not know much about the issues facing college sports...
I love the use of "striking" in quotations!
Personally, I am quite attuned to college athletics, just not much about the athletics of the University of Minnesota. Instead, I follow my alma mater - Boston College - whose football team is now ranked #4 in the nation! But I am the kind of fan who has difficulty watching a BC game because the heartbreak of a loss is too much at times. I would rather just read about it in the paper or online than have to endure watching a loss.
Okay, back to crunching numbers and writing papers.
Report: Faculty Feel 'Disconnected' from College Sports, Think Some Coaches' Salaries are Excessive
By LIBBY SANDER
A "striking number" of professors involved in governance at universities with high-profile athletics programs say they are disconnected from and do not know much about the issues facing college sports, according to survey findings released on Tuesday by the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics.
In the nationwide survey of faculty attitudes, 62 percent of the respondents said their universities' athletics programs were structurally separate from academic programs, and 50 percent said decisions about sports on their campus were driven by the needs of the entertainment industry with "minimal regard" for the institutions' academic mission, according to an executive summary describing the poll's findings.
The full report will be released next Monday at the commission's Faculty Summit on Intercollegiate Athletics, in Washington.
Although the survey was designed to focus on the perceptions of professors who are involved in faculty governance or intercollegiate-athletics governance and who have contact with undergraduates, more than a third of the respondents said they were unfamiliar with policies and practices applying to campus athletics and with the financial aspect of athletics.
"The large segment of uninformed faculty is particularly noteworthy," the summary states, because of the sample's design. Professors involved in governance or undergraduate teaching, it says, "would seem more likely than a randomly drawn sample of university faculty to be informed about these issues."
The summary also states that 72 percent of the respondents thought the salaries paid to head football and basketball coaches were excessive, though half also said that their institutions' success in athletics spurred alumni giving to campus programs outside of athletics.
Other key findings in the summary include the following:
* Forty-six percent of faculty members were satisfied with their university president's oversight of athletics, compared with 28 percent who were not.
* Fifty-three percent said they were satisfied with awarding scholarships based on athletic ability, while 31 percent were not.
* Sixty-one percent said athletes were motivated to earn their degrees and keep pace with their peers in the classroom.
* Fifty percent said academic standards did not need to be lowered to achieve success in athletics, although 32 percent said they believed some compromises in academic standards were necessary to succeed in football and basketball.
The survey, conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan's Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education, analyzes responses from more than 2,000 tenured or tenure-track faculty members at 23 institutions in the National Collegiate Athletic Association's Division I-A.
Posted by richlee at October 11, 2007 07:05 AM