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“Why call it a university?”

Selena Roberts, SI.com.

… As Florida State’s faculty frets over looming budget cuts that could push 200 staffers out the door, [FSU president] Wetherell is throwing money at lawyers to preserve football victories.

“Florida has been very hard hit by the mortgage crisis and recession — surely that impacts on the state funding that FSU receives for education,” says Murray Sperber, a professor emeritus at Indiana, who wrote Beer & Circus: How Big-Time College Sports Is Crippling Undergraduate Education. “Shouldn’t the FSU president be working on solving that problem? Now, he might argue that Bowden’s victory total is what keeps legislators and taxpayers happy, and so he has to get that up front. If he is right, why call it a university, especially when you overlook egregious cheating?”…

Why call it anything? It’s nothing, really.

Margaret Soltan, March 25, 2009 9:37PM
Posted in: sport

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2 Responses to ““Why call it a university?””

  1. Mr Punch Says:

    "the 1903 Florida State College Catalogue adds an interesting footnote to this period:

    In 1883 the institution, now long officially known as the West Florida Seminary, was organized by the Board of Education as The Literary College of the University of Florida. Owing to lack of means for the support of this more ambitious project, and also owing to the fact that soon thereafter schools for technical training were established, this association soon dissolved. It remains to be remarked, however, that the legislative act passed in 1885, bestowing upon the institution the title of the University of Florida, has never been repealed. The more pretentious name is not assumed by the college owing to the fact that it does not wish to misrepresent its resources and purposes."

    — from the FSU Web site (History)

  2. University Diaries » Why does the professor always get a pass? Says:

    […] what was recently the most violent team in university football; without national embarrassment T.K. Wetherell running it, Florida State couldn’t produce the biggest sports cheating scandal in the […]

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