Beer and Circus Read online

  Of the 1,906 students who filled out the questionnaire, 1,071 were male and 835 were female. This does not reflect the gender ratio in American higher education: the imbalance occurred when many more males responded to the web survey than did females, probably because undergraduate men are more interested in college sports than are women. Of the total respondents, 1,312 attended NCAA Division I schools, and 581 were students at NCAA Division III institutions. These divisions constitute the standard separation between big-time intercollegiate athletics (almost all members of Division I give athletic scholarships), and low-pressure, low-profile college sports (no Division III school grants athletic scholarships). In addition, the number of respondents at Division II and NAIA (National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics) institutions was negligible (13), but because these schools give athletic scholarships, I placed these responses into the Division I group.

  The poll does not account for the millions of students at junior colleges (JUCOs) throughout the country nor the large number of undergraduates at schools, particularly urban ones, that do not field intercollegiate athletic teams. However, because these institutions are so far from the world of the NCAA, I believe that including their students in the survey would distort the results. (JUCO colleges do provide athletes for NCAA schools, and this phenomenon is discussed in Chapter 19).

  I undertook the survey, in part, because social scientists have done almost no polling on undergraduate attitudes about big-time college sports and its connection to the student party scene. In the end, I hope that my work prompts social scientists to undertake research on these topics, and to produce much larger and more authoritative surveys than mine on these issues crucial to the future of American higher education.

  A Final Personal Note

  In the introduction to this book and throughout the text, I discuss the various university subcultures, particularly the collegiate and academic ones. I also mention that individual students sometimes move from one subculture to another during their undergraduate years. In fact, I did this at Purdue University: I started within the collegiate subculture, even becoming president of my fraternity and vice president of the Inter-Fraternity Council, but, as a senior, thanks to a number of excellent professors, I became engaged in academics and went on to graduate school and university teaching.

  My journey was somewhat unusual in two ways. Most faculty members spend their entire university careers in the academic subculture: as freshmen, they gravitate to it, and they remain there for the rest of their undergraduate, graduate, and professorial years. Secondly, as a late-blooming academic, I was fortunate to attend a large public university like Purdue when it, and peer institutions, could accommodate me and similar students. The contemporary Big-time U is much less responsive to late bloomers than was its predecessor; moreover, after years in the hard terrain of huge lecture classes, it is difficult for a student to flourish academically.

  I also believe that my undergraduate experience gives me a unique perspective on, and empathy for, students within the collegiate subculture. Because most academics at Big-time U’s have known only their own subculture, they have minimal interest in, and some antipathy for, the world in which a majority of their undergraduates live. As a result, they rarely study it and almost never write about it.

  Personal reasons prompted me to write this book—both my experiences as an undergraduate and as a teacher of undergraduates—and I hope that the reader shares my anger about the current state of general education at large, public research universities, and agrees with my suggestions for reform.

  Ten years ago, a commentator wrote about my book College Sports Inc.: “This thorough investigation identifies the time bomb planted within American higher education and offers a plan for defusing it.” At the time, and for that book, I considered the statement somewhat exaggerated. However, I stand by it for Beer and Circus: How Big-time College Sports Is Crippling Undergraduate Education.

  INTRODUCTION

  This “introduction” provides definitions of the four major student subcultures that have long existed in American higher education: the collegiate, the academic, the vocational, and the rebel. An early-1960s study by sociologists Burton Clark and Martin Trow outlined the main characteristics of these subcultures and noted that “an individual student may well participate in several of the subcultures available on his [or her] campus, though in most cases one will embody his [or her] dominant orientation.”

  Almost forty years later, although more students than ever before participate in several campus subcultures, and sometimes move from one dominant one to another, Clark and Trow’s description of the subcultures—with major emendations and additions—still apply to undergraduate life in America. However, as they stressed and it is important to repeat: These “are types of subcultures and not types of students,” and stereotyping undergraduates serves no purpose; in fact, it obscures the study of them.

  Past college student life is prologue to the present, and the past reveals the depth and continuity of the undergraduate subcultures. The past also provides the key to understanding contemporary beer-and-circus. Therefore, this introduction adds necessary historical material to the basic definitions.

  Collegiate Culture

  The collegiate culture [is] a world of football, fraternities and sororities, dates, drinking, and campus fun. A good deal of student life on many campuses revolves around this culture … . Teachers and courses and grades are in this picture but somewhat dimly and in the background. The fraternities have to make their grade-point-average, [other collegiate] students have to hit the books periodically if they are to get their diplomas, some gestures have to be made to the adult world of courses and grades which provides the justification for the collegiate round … the busy round of social activities … .

  It [the collegiate culture] is, however, indifferent and resistant to serious demands from the faculty for an involvement with ideas and issues.

  —Burton Clark and Martin Trow, sociologists

  The undergraduates who participate in this subculture are usually termed collegians or collegiates. The subculture began in the eighteenth century when the sons of the rich came to college for four years of pleasure and social contacts. They considered academic work an intrusion on their fun, and they were content to pass their courses with a “gentleman’s C” grade. As higher education expanded in the nineteenth century, many sons and some daughters of the middle class entered universities, and the new collegians started the fraternity and sorority system, as well as the first intercollegiate athletic teams. The collegiate subculture remained antieducational, and this characteristic continued into and through the twentieth century, with student social activities, particularly the campus party scene, taking precedence over academic endeavors.

  From their founding in the nineteenth century, college fraternities became bastions of the collegiate subculture and its mores. Adopting Greek letter names and elaborate ceremonies (in imitation of the Masonic order), Greeks used high-minded rhetoric to justify their traditions and customs, but, then as now, their main purpose was fellowship and partying. In the first half of the twentieth century, they so dictated the terms of student life that the Gamma Delta Iota movement began.

  Some undergraduates, either not invited to join a fraternity or sorority or unable to afford the expenses of Greek life, remained independent and lived in university dormitories or off-campus rooming houses. But these students wanted to participate in the collegiate subculture—particularly its partying and support of intercollegiate athletics—and they banded together, calling themselves Gamma Delta Iotas (God Damn Independents), turning their housing units into versions of Greek houses. As their name indicates, the GDIs took pride in not being Greek, but they so imitated the originals that they canceled the meaning of the term independent. Most important, they extended the boundaries of the collegiate subculture to include large numbers of non-Greek undergraduates.

  In the second half of the twentieth century
, the size and influence of the collegiate subculture varied from school to school and from decade to decade. In the 1950s, particularly at state universities, the collegiate subculture was large and powerful (the movie Animal House attempts to portray Greek life in this era), but, in the politically turbulent 1960s, the subculture shrank, even at Big-time U’s. In subsequent decades, the collegiate population increased considerably, and, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, at some public universities with residential campuses, a large percentage of undergraduates belong to Greek organizations, or live in highly collegiate dorms, or in off-campus mini-versions of Greek houses. On the other hand, at many urban schools and small private colleges, the collegiate subculture has never been an important factor in student life and shows no signs of becoming one. No matter what its size or influence at an individual institution, this subculture has always retained its antiacademic bias and formed the core of the campus and off-campus party scene.

  Academic Culture

  Present on every college campus, although dominant on some and marginal on others, is the [undergraduate student] subculture of serious academic effort. The essence of this system of values is its identification with the intellectual concerns of the serious faculty members. These students … work hard, get the best grades, and let the world of ideas and knowledge reach them.

  —Burton Clark and Martin Trow, sociologists

  At the beginning of American higher education, the first teachers were ministers, and the first students were the sons of the rich—except for a small number of clergymen’s sons and some young men hoping to join that profession. These latter students refused to participate in the fun and games of the collegiate subculture; moreover, unlike the collegians, they did not regard the minister teachers with hostility—quite the opposite, they considered them role models, and they emulated their seriousness. The ministers responded by paying special attention to this small group of students, rewarding some, upon graduation, with academic positions, and helping others acquire church pulpits. In this way, the ministers perpetuated themselves and their vocations. Similarly, in the nineteenth century, when colleges evolved into universities, and minister teachers gave way to professional faculty members, these men and women also chose their successors—the minority of students with academic ambitions—and this tradition continues to this day.

  From the eighteenth century on, the collegians scorned their academically inclined classmates, regarding them with suspicion and as fair game for pranks and insults. One historian of American higher education terms the serious undergraduates the outsiders: on many campuses they were, and still are, outside the mainstream of student life—the collegiate subculture.

  Unlike the collegians who mainly exist in a world of immediate gratification, the outsiders practice deferred gratification. They accept the curriculum and the discipline imposed by the faculty because they believe that, after four years, they will enter graduate or professional school and have a professional, often an academic, career. As a result, they are the undergraduates who do all the reading assignments, who turn in their papers on time, who prepare for exams and perform excellently on them, and who attend the professor’s office hours.

  In the nineteenth century, the collegians called serious students, among other derogatory names, “grubs,” “polers,” “bootlicks,” and “toadies.” In the twentieth century, the jibes persisted, only the terms changed: “grinds,” “geeks,” “dweebs,” as well as expressions referencing the more overt sexuality of the age, “brown-noses,” “ass-lickers,” and “throats.” Academic students have always tried to ignore the insults, and have continued to raise their hands in class. Outside of class, the young academics sought one anothers’ company, often living together in on- and off-campus housing units. If a university contained a sizable number of serious students, they created their own subculture within the larger undergraduate world; however, if only a few attended the school, they usually became isolated and lonely.

  As Clark and Trow indicated, the academic subculture is “present on every college campus, although dominant on some and marginal on others.” Today, at some private colleges and universities, a large percentage of undergraduates belong to it; such institutions as the University of Chicago and Brandeis University send a large percentage of their students on to graduate and professional schools. However, at many public universities, academically inclined students constitute a single digit minority, and this translates into a very low percentage of the school’s graduates going on for advanced degrees.

  Some men and women who began their university careers within the academic ethos of a private institution end up teaching at Big-time U’s with huge collegiate subcultures and small academic ones. As a result, these faculty members have minimal understanding of, and sympathy for, the majority of their undergraduate students. In addition, even those professors who attended public universities as undergraduates, because usually they belonged to the academic subculture and disliked the collegiate one, often exhibit an animus toward the collegians in their classrooms. They were outsiders as undergraduates, and they remain outsiders as professors.

  Vocational culture

  For [vocational students], there is simply not enough time or money to support the extensive play of the collegiate culture. To these students, many of them married, most of them working anywhere from twenty to forty hours a week, college is largely off-the-job training, an organization of courses and credits leading to a diploma and a better job than they could otherwise command … . But, like participants in the collegiate culture, these students are also resistant to intellectual demands on them beyond what is required to pass the courses. To many of these hard-driven students, ideas and scholarship are as much a luxury and distraction as are sports and fraternities.

  —Burton Clark and Martin Trow, sociologists

  Vocational students have long existed in American higher education (today, they constitute over half of all college students). Traditionally, vocationals were characterized as students “working their way through college,” and they neither participated in collegiate life nor, unlike academic students, attracted special attention from the faculty.

  The first wave of vocational students entered American higher education at the beginning of the twentieth century. Often the children of recent immigrants, they mainly attended urban colleges and universities, and usually lived at home, lacking the money or inclination to reside in a dormitory or a Greek house.

  Unlike collegians at residential schools, vocationals did not regard college as a “fun interval” between adolescence and adulthood; for vocationals, attending university was another job, similar to their part-time or full-time occupations. As a result, most vocational students lacked the time and energy to intellectually engage their schoolwork, and they considered their classes as obstacle courses with hurdles to be jumped as efficiently as possible.

  Vocationals were more conscientious students than the collegians—the casual “gentleman’s C” was alien to them—but they tended to do their homework quickly and often achieved what was called the “plebian C.” Most of all, they wanted their C’s to add up to a college degree. However, unlike the collegians, who viewed a sheepskin as an excellent trophy of the good times at Ol’ Siwash, or the academic students, who considered a diploma as proof of attaining a high level of knowledge and culture, the vocationals saw a degree as an entrance fee into the middle class.

  After World War II, an enormous wave of vocational students permanently changed America’s colleges and universities. As a result of the legislation popularly known as the GI Bill, more than a million ex-service personnel entered higher education, many of whom were the first persons in their families to attend college. The vets regarded going to college as a job, and often took “extra loads” of courses to finish as quickly as possible.

  To accommodate these students, and to gain their government-paid tuition dollars, many private colleges, small and sleepy domains of class privilege befo
re the war, transformed themselves into large, bustling, and democratic facilities; public universities grew exponentially, also expanding their clientele from the children of the middle class to multiclass and multiage students; and municipal schools benefited greatly, their long-standing vocational orientation fitting the vets well.

  In the post—WWII period, the undergraduate population on most campuses doubled or tripled from prewar levels, and the number of college graduates increased accordingly. In 1939-40, around two hundred thousand Americans received college degrees; ten years later, the first graduating class that included WWII vets pushed the degree total to close to five hundred thousand, and, in the 1950s, the total continued to grow as increasing numbers of nonvets entered higher education. The GIs, who pioneered so much of modern consumer America in the 1950s, including the necessity of owning a car and a house, turned a college degree into a required consumer product, mandatory for all classes of Americans. Henceforth, for a person to succeed in the United States, he or she needed a college diploma.

  America’s colleges and universities welcomed this new public attitude—it helped reposition them from their historic place on the periphery of American society to the center of postwar commerce and prosperity. Once a college degree became an indispensable consumer item, it guaranteed schools a large and continuous stream of students. It also convinced legislators and taxpayers to support higher education with much more public money than ever before.