BY ANNIE ADAMS Annie Adams is a faculty member and AAUP chapter member at Morehead State University. Decreases in state appropriations, increases in tuition, public doubt about the “value” of higher education, and exploding student debt—these are the contexts within which we need to discuss high cost of intercollegiate athletics. In this “new normal” of…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH What follows is the fifth section of the most recent higher education report produced by the Ohio Conference of AAUP. John McNay, the President of the Conference, and Sara Kilpatrick, the Executive Director of the Conference, deserves kudos for doing the bulk of the work on this report. The report…
POSTED BY MARTIN KICH Friday, June 2, 2017 To the WSU Board of Trustees, Interim President Curtis McCray, and incoming President Cheryl Schrader: We, the undersigned faculty, are writing to express our objection to the proposed FY18 budget announced on May 19. It calls for a $1.6 million increase in budgeted spending for intercollegiate…
Athletics contribute enormously to college life. They provide a unifying force across the campus community in which the college’s principal stakeholders – faculty, students, staff, alumni, parents, donors, and the community – can rally with pride in support of the institution. Athletics are often the public face of a college. At the largest institutions, this…
BY MICHAEL C. BEHRENT Interviewer Michael C. Behrent of Appalachian State University is vice president of the AAUP’s North Carolina state conference. Several months ago, something strange happened to Jay Smith, a tenured professor in UNC-Chapel Hill’s History Department: he found out that his dean made his chair cancel a class he had been scheduled…
Writing for the Hartford Courant, Sally Jenkins provides a very acerbically satiric, first-person response ostensibly from University of Connecticut football coach Randy Edsell to the furor now surrounding his decision to rescind a scholarship offer to a player recruited by his predecessor: “Over the course of my long and distinctively insincere career, which includes…
BY HANK REICHMAN Remember that widely circulated map illustrating how in 39 of 50 states the highest-paid state employee is a public university football or basketball coach? If you don’t, here it is: According to USA Today‘s annual survey, in 2015-16 some 72 college football coaches were paid over a million dollars annually, not including…
BY MARTIN KICH Business Insider has aggregated the NFL draft projections of five “experts”: Todd McShay, Mel Kiper, Jr., Rob Rang, Matt Miller, and Steve Palazzolo. What is of interest to me is less who the particular players are than which programs they are playing for. Before listing the individual players, I have aggregated the…
