All hail the king.
Football continued to show it reigns supreme on Friday when Dave Brandon’s resignation as athletic director of the University of Michigan was accepted by University President Mark Schlissel.
The resignation was in name only - allegedly Brandon would have been fired if he chose to remain at his post. An alarming event for a man who upgraded nearly every athletic facility at UofM and significantly increased the already sky high revenues the athletic department enjoys. A fact that should have every college administrator in America shaking in their boots.
For years now, “non-profit colleges” have operated under the guise of pursuing higher academic ideals when the universities’ bottom line was the actual motivation for tuition hikes to fund facility upgrades and administration, faculty and staff pay increases.
The U.S. News reports that the cost to attend a four-year university has risen a staggering 79.5 percent from 2003 to 2013. Brandon only raised football ticket prices by 23 percent and students marched to the president’s front yard with signs and chants demanding Brandon’s ouster, they created blogs and petitions and printed T-shirts echoing the sentiment.
According to Collegecalc.com it costs a UofM Michigan resident $12,948 to attend the college this year, in 2009 it cost $11,659. UofM students could have bought an additional 32 of Brandon’s overpriced student football tickets a year if they would have protested the cost of tuition instead of the cost of a football game.
This is not to give EMU students a pass by looking down at UofM students’ priorities. When EMU raised tuition and fees again this year, there was no outcry – no protest. Students blindly opened up their wallets and signed away their credit when they accepted student loans. Enrollment at EMU was high again this year, with the third largest freshman class entering the institution in a decade.
During a recent forum on the cost of higher education at EMU with U.S. House of Representatives democratic candidate Debbie Dingell and a group of students, the tone of the room was one of hopelessness. Students were more concerned about educating middle school students about the dangers of student loans for college than on ways of reforming how Washington funds education.
If alumni and students saddled with student loan debt put as much effort into fighting how much college costs as they did in how much it costs to attend a college football game, change could occur – college administrators and politicians know it and fear it – but it is up to us demand it.
Colleges have been playing this shell game for decades. They put on a show for a few hours every Saturday afternoon to make us feel like we are part of a community, like we matter to the college experience. In reality the only thing that matters is dollars and cents, and Washington and colleges are continually getting more and more of ours.
Until people take the time to be outraged and protest over what really matters we all need to bow down to the King. Football reigns supreme in America and higher education is used as a proxy minor league system to make a very few people rich under the guise of the college experience. A costume we readily believe as we pay more and more for it.
