Best to Have Football, Basketball Coaches As College Presidents
It’s been a long time since college presidents were picked from the ranks of distinguished scholars among the faculty. These days, it’s all about fundraising and fiscal management. No intellectuals need apply. In fact, presidents don’t even need to have a college degree.
Successful business people don’t necessarily need college either to make lots of money. Experience, intelligence, and hard work are the path to enrichment. College graduates tend not to get into the big leagues beyond a meagerly comfortable salary.
These days, the academic pretensions of college presidents are mostly window dressing, defined by the online dictionary as “something that is intended to make a person or thing seem better or more attractive but that does not have any real importance or effect.” Same with student athletes, despite some as-with-everything exceptions.
Look at most colleges today to find the top spot taken by people with business backgrounds or student affairs. Academics is pure image that can be manipulated, it seems. The media knows how to manage public thinking.
Fundraising, glad handing, and ceremonial duties are more appropriate. Getting more government money is what it’s all about, including student loan cash. Of course, making sure that students are happy and entertained is synonymous with retention and the revenue stream. Learning and scholarly activities are about as important as in high school, where social promotion follows the time-in-grade formula of labor unions.
So what brightens the image of most universities? You guessed it–the football and basketball teams and the hoopla that attends them. This is all the more reason to organize college recruitment and endowment drives around the magic of football stadiums and basketball courts. Pride has to come from something doesn’t it? Letting football and basketball coaches run the show seems likely in the near future. In fact, university athletes don’t even need to be students, do they?
