Insight From a Great University Reformer
Posted by R. J. O’Hara for the Collegiate Way
15 March 2004 (collegiateway.org) — One of the great higher education reformers of our time is Murray Sperber of Indiana University at Bloomington, the author of Beer and Circus: How Big-Time College Sports is Crippling Undergraduate Education. On the back page of the March 12th issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education Sperber writes: “I’ve been struck by how little the average administrator, particularly the average president, knows about undergraduate life at his or her institution. The same is true for most faculty members.” Truer words were never spoken.
Sperber’s devastating critique of the “beer and circus” culture that is tacitly supported on many campuses should be required reading for all university faculty and administrators. But the people who should really take it to heart at the parents who are thinking about sending their children to Big State U and the legislators who continue to fund these so-called universities. Public exposure is one of the only cures for corruption of this kind: sunlight is always the best disinfectant.
