March is the month sports fans refer to as “March Madness,” for good reason. The month is filled with conference basketball tournaments only to be followed by the annual NCAA men’s basketball tournament, along with a scattering of other events along the way.
But the “main event,” so to speak, is the NCAA tournament. Sixty-four college basketball games over the course of three weeks are enough to wet any sports fan’s appetite.
The attention placed on those games is what makes college administrators giddy with excitement. To the college administrators of the 65 teams selected for the tournament, it means more visibility they hope will eventually turn into increased alumni contributions or a higher number of college applicants.
Yes, it’s fun to sit down on the couch with your favorite adult beverage in one hand, the remote control in the other and a bowl of chips in your lap and watch every game from the play-in game to the championship game. However, do we pay similar attention to the academic failings of today’s colleges and universities as we do college sports? Chances are few if any understand the true landscape of the American public university system and some of the problems that it currently faces.
We are more likely to hear about instances like Temple men’s basketball coach John Chaney – who was suspended after sending a player into a game to deliberately injure another team’s player – than we are about professors like Ward Churchill, who used his position at the University of Colorado to indoctrinate students with his liberal ideologies and make radical statements about the victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Sports are fun and just a game. What we teach students once they enter the classrooms of the ivory towers is what is more important. But, you wouldn’t know it by the attention placed on college athletics compared to the scant attention the media places on relevant issues in higher education. Only when a “scandal” breaks out on a campus do the media ever report on anything other than the same college administration line and dance of “we need more money.” Other than that, reporters stay away and do not place the proper sunshine on academic irregularities that occur on college campuses today.
Several studies have indicated the problems in higher education are real. Students are not prepared for the workforce when they graduate. Money is wasted on new buildings instead of improving programs. Conservatives and Christian students are treated with contempt by administrators and professors instead of respect. Courses place more attention on cultural diversity and rewriting American history than on providing a sound liberal arts education for students.
These are just some of the issues that plague America’s public college and universities today.
Did they make your blood boil? Probably not. Did they make you angry? Perhaps, but only for a moment. Did they make you want to question the administration at your alma mater or favorite institution? Doubtful at best.
Now think about that football game you believed that your favorite college sports program should’ve won. Think about that basketball game where your team lost by 2 points in the final seconds. Or even think about a bowl loss after a great season or being knocked off by a lower seed in the first round of the NCAA tournament.
Did they make your blood boil? Probably. Did they make you angry? Yes, enough so, in some cases, to shed a tear or two. Did they make you want to question the administration at your alma mater or favorite institution? Question them? You had wanted them fired for not putting together a “winning team” long ago.
As taxpayers, we are all shareholders in public higher education with states spending, in some cases, billions of dollars on colleges and universities. What that kind of money being spent, including in North Carolina, on higher education the system should not be taken for granted. We assume that when we drop off our loved ones at their dorm that they are going to receive a quality education. In some cases, they do receive a sound education. In others, they do not.
We must pay more attention to what transpires inside the college classrooms and hold college administrators and professors – who believe they can push their agendas on an unsuspecting public and students – accountable for their actions. Anything less allows the problems to grow and continue, unchecked and with little accountability from the government or the general public
So as you sit back and watch the games unfold throughout the month, think to yourself what is more important – the score of some game or improving higher education?