USA Today Editorial Notes the Tip of the Iceberg

In their lavish facilities, schools show there isn’t much student in student-athlete.

Source: College (Wretched Excess) Bowl: Our view

I commented.

College behavior is far worse than what is described here. I know. I am a former math professor who most recently taught at an “elite” school.

Not only does the phrase “student-athlete” need to be enclosed in quotes, so does the word “student”. What used to be so quaintly thought of as a “student” is now only thought of as a “customer”.

Here is the famous sociologist David Riesman, writing in 1980.

“…advantage can..be taken of [students] by unscrupulous instructors and institutions.. the “wants” of students to which competing institutions, departments, and individual faculty members cater are quite different from the “needs” of …”

As an illustration of what that leads to, I was asked by the math chair (at an “elite” school) to teach a critical required course as a “cookbook” course. He said that he had just “wrested” a course from engineering and wasn’t going to let them “wrest” this one back. In turn, the Engineering Dean of Student Academic Integrity, when I wrote him that some students weren’t doing well because the cheated on homework, wrote me back that he was worried about retention.

So, not only is “student-athlete” essentially a fraud played on a (knowing) public; “student” is essentially a fraud played on an unknowing public. That is much worse.

For the e-mails and documents and complete story of what happened in the course, see my blog inside-higher-ed . There is much more there, including how higher ed dumbs down K-12, damaging our whole society.