Former University President Nails Many of Higher Education’s Ills
Often, the strongest criticisms of higher education come from insiders. One insider is Daniel Johnson, who retired as president of the University of Toledo in 2006 after an academic career…
Protecting Student-Athletes in the UNC System
In college athletics, student-athletes have few protections against coaching demands that may put their health at risk. As the parent of a college athlete who was left with a chronic…
How Nike Transformed the University of Oregon
While money is not the root of all evil, it is undeniably responsible for the transformation of the University of Oregon (UO). It changed from a typical state flagship where…
A Unique Opportunity for Athletics Reform
Many colleges are setting up their student-athletes for failure. Whether one looks to the long-term neurological health risks that young athletes are subject to, or the myriad cases of academic…
How Colleges Could Benefit from an NBA Rule Change
It is increasingly apparent that college basketball serves as an unofficial minor league for the National Basketball Association (NBA) rather than as an extracurricular activity for students. And it is…
Gaming the System: How Kentucky Spends Funding for Students on Athletics
Kentuckians were forced to consider potential problems with intercollegiate athletics when both the University of Louisville and the University of Kentucky were implicated in the recent FBI probe into possibly…
How Does a University Advance an ‘Athlete-friendly’ Curriculum?
Remember the huge University of North Carolina athletics scandal, whereby the university’s athletics department managed to arrange for star football and basketball players to get preferential treatment to such an…
Sperber’s ‘Beer and Circus’—An Unintentional Argument for Community College?
The year 2000 saw the publication of Beer and Circus, the notable book by former Indiana University professor Murray Sperber. It was a big step forward for the analysis of…
College Sports and Educational Opportunity: Exposing the (Half) Truth
Conventional wisdom and public perception hold that college sports provide educational opportunities for thousands of student-athletes who could not afford to attend college without them. The National Collegiate Athletic Association…
No Harm, No Foul in UNC Sports Scandal Course Dispute
The Raleigh News & Observer recently published a contentious exchange between the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s history professor Jay Smith and vice chancellor of communications Joel Curran…