By Professor Doom
The massive
corruption of higher education isn’t restricted to college sportsball, but,
thanks to the spirit of competition, what goes on there is more publicized.
It’s no grand conspiracy that sports scandals get more press, just how things
work. Cheating teams make the news because the losing side complains
immediately after the loss. On the other hand, even if every student in the
school is cheating or if the whole school is operating fraudulently, it barely
registers a blip in the media: there are no immediate losers. When the
graduates go into the real world, it takes years to find out their illicitly
acquired degrees are worthless…and by that time, it’s far too late to complain.
Even in college
sportsball, however, when the bad guys are caught, there’s only the illusion
that justice is served. The Penn State sex scandal involved at least 15 years
of young (not college age) boys being “molested” (a very kind word for it, to
judge by eyewitness testimony) in the Penn State showers, before something was
finally done about it.
As I’ve
discussed before, the reasons nothing was done are pretty simple; between
the kangaroo campus court system, and administration’s fixation on growth
and retention over anything resembling integrity, there was no way for a fix to
come from the inside…justice must come from outside the system.
Even when justice
is served, it seems to be more of a show. Penn State’s President Spanier, who
presided over the years of cover-up, was forced to step down from ruling over
Penn State. Hey, that looks good, right?
It’s a show. Spanier
gets a golden parachute package of around $3,000,000, on his way out. If he
manages to avoid jail, he’ll also get to keep a tenured, $600,000 a year “professor”
position…seriously,
nobody thinks this is odd? Einstein
never raked in this kind of loot! Spanier is on paid leave (i.e., gets paid
$600,000 a year for free—more in a month that most Americans get in a year) while
the criminal charges are being decided. So, the front page news says he’s fired
from the institution, and on page 18 you can find out the institution is
handing him millions of dollars and a cushy job. That’s not exactly justice.
--seriously, when you
hear about “tenured professors” making insane amounts of money in lifelong
jobs, please realize that much, if not all, of it is just administrators
further plundering education for their own profits. Legitimate faculty are being impoverished by
an exploitative system of adjunct-hood.
Penn State’s
sportsball program also got some punishment: 112 wins were “wiped out,” the coach’s record (at least in sportsball)
negated, and Penn State also got a $60 million dollar fine (chump change
compared to what they pay admin, but I digress).
Hey, that sounds
pretty serious. It’s stunning that the NCAA, an organization noted for its
stellar lack of integrity, still has no trouble at all giving lessons to higher
education administration on how decent people behave.
Not so fast. All
those punishments?
The linked article says that, hey, NCAA was a little rash, and has reconsidered its “punishments”.
Now, I guess it’s strange to cancel those
wins, but seriously, that was a symbolic gesture. The players involved honestly
don’t care (all their stats are preserved, after all, and, they’re just games,
not even “professional”). Even a symbolic gesture is too much for the NCAA.
The coach gets his titles back despite
his extraordinarily foul and disturbingly regular extracurricular activities. I
have a problem with this: the coach clearly used his position and “success” as
a means for those activities, and so that success absolutely has a taint to it
that should be negated (unlike the wins themselves, which was a product of an
entire team’s efforts).
What about the $60 million? Well, it will
be spent “within the state” on something or other…hopefully some actual
reporter will follow that money, because it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that
it just goes to more golden parachutes.
It’s funny to read the article and see how
the chamber-of-horrors type acts in the showers are now being candy-coated. The
most profane deception in the article must be this:
NO.
Everyone did not miss it.
Eyewitness testimony was submitted,
repeatedly, to the administration regarding what was going on in the showers at
Penn State.
In
2002, the then-graduate assistant told Paterno that he had witnessed Sandusky
abusing a boy in a Penn State locker room shower. Paterno informed Curley, who
later met with McQueary and Schultz. McQueary, who became an assistant coach at
Penn State, reiterated his statement to the grand jury. He has reportedly said
that he went to the police; the authorities dispute that claim. The school put
him on administrative leave….
--what,
being put on leave for daring to ask for an iota of integrity? Honest, Penn
State isn’t the only place like this…
It is insulting to the victims to
speak so bold a lie as “everyone missed it.” These acts were reported,
explicitly, as much as I’m sure it disgusted the witnesses to explicitly
describe what they saw, and Penn State administration did NOTHING, beyond fire
up the kangaroo court system and dismiss the claims.
“Nothing” seems to be approximately the
level of penalties Penn State will face based on their willingness to support
such activities. How can anyone not be disgusted by this? I can’t emphasize
strongly enough how useless the campus court system is.
Admin:
The appeal was made by faculty, questioning the prior decision that continuing
education coursework at an accredited state institution should not be classified
as career development coursework at an accredited institution. The faculty
asserts that accredited coursework at a state institution should count as
accredited coursework. A committee was formed to make a decision on this
matter.
The
ruling of the committee is as follows: “Some feel that there is agreement. Some
feel that there is disagreement. Some have no opinion on the matter.”
The
committee’s ruling is final, and there is to be no further discussion on the
matter.”
--in
all my personal experience with the kangaroo campus court system, it’s tough for me to say which display of
incompetence was the most ostentatious. I defy any normal human being to
determine if the appellant won or lost the decision. It’d be nice to know, for
any other faculty seeking to satisfy continuing education requirements (having
read the policy with my own eyes, I assert any non-moron could determine
clearly that accredited coursework counts as accredited career development). I
remind the reader: the same system is used for quibbles over policy as for
allegations of brutal sodomy.
How
is it a wonder that grotesque violations which admin didn’t want to know about
remained unknown? Can you tell if I’m talking about Penn State, or UNC?
I maintain the administration of Penn
State is not particularly special, and is fairly representative of the rulers of
many of our institutions of higher education. Given the demonstration that these
guys literally won’t make a tiny bit of effort to stop the degradation of
children, if doing so might cut into growth and retention, why would anyone
suspect they would do anything to stop the degradation of higher education?
I won’t go so far as to suggest administration
in higher education is promoting the degradation of children (although
Spanier’s $600,000 a year job-for-life does have me scratching my head…), but I’ve
shown many times administration has no issues with the degradation of higher
education, at least if it will promote growth and retention.
And not even symbolic gestures will be
made to slow them down.
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