← Previous Post: | Next Post:

 

“Many used NIU as a means to an end – getting an education and leaving it at that.”

A local Northern Illinois football booster really lets it rip as he tries to account for poor attendance at the school’s football games — despite a strong record of wins.

He and his fellow boosters dutifully go down the list of established excuses – an ever-lengthening list, given shitty attendance at deficit-ridden programs all over the country.

But when you get down to it, as this guy says, it’s really about morality. Many NIU students are contemptible enough to view the university as a place where they get an education. They enroll, take classes, graduate, and, having educated themselves, get jobs or whatever… You get enough of these a-university-is-a-place-where-you-get-an-education people at your school, and goodbye full stadium.

Margaret Soltan, December 28, 2012 4:14AM
Posted in: sport

Trackback URL for this post:
https://www.margaretsoltan.com/wp-trackback.php?p=38634

2 Responses to ““Many used NIU as a means to an end – getting an education and leaving it at that.””

  1. Stephen Karlson Says:

    It’s true that a lot of our students return to Chicago or the suburbs on the weekend. In many cases, that’s to hold jobs. There are also a goodly number of our students holding full-time jobs in the local warehouses (your party-size Crunch bars probably passed through DeKalb enroute to trick-or-treating). Those jobs are often overnight or weekends, allows for a bit of time to eat and come to class, but not so much for football.

    Weeknight football is also a mistake, as those evening hours are for second-shift classes or for working on group projects (on many a football Tuesday the activity level in the student center and the snack bar area of the business college building is as high as it would be any ordinary Tuesday). To its credit, the university administration has not requested that faculty cancel classes on football school nights, although unofficially they recommend against scheduling examinations or quizzes those nights.

    Perhaps the conference, or saner heads on the athletic board, will see the wisdom of ending those weeknight games. Saturday starts at 6.30 pm in September, yes, Tuesday at 8 pm in November, no, and enough of the Friday after Thanksgiving morning games.

    That said, I am enjoying the Orange Bowl hoopla, such as it is (Northern Illinois shirts on sale in Rockford, forsooth.) There are worse things that can happen at a university.

  2. Bill Gleason Says:

    Football Coach Kill, formerly at UNI, has now moved on up to the Big House at the University of Minnesota. There he makes the top salary at the U, approximately one mil, with incentives that could top out to about two mil.

    We also participated in a bowl game this year, although not at quite the level of the Orange Bowl.

    Another similarity is that attendance is down at football games at the U of M, especially by students who may also suffer from the disease of wanting an education.

    Meanwhile, back on the poor side of town, the mean old Wall Street Journal has just kicked the stuffing out of the U of M administration with a broadside:

    Deans List: Hiring Spree Fattens College Bureaucracy—And Tuition

    Unfortunately this is on a pay site, but arguing fair use, I’ve got it up at the usual place: http://bit.ly/TxDQ4E

    Happy New Year!

Comment on this Entry

UD REVIEWED

Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times

George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil

It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo

There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub

You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann

Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog

University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog

[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal

Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education

[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University

Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University

The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog

Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages

Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway

From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law

University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association

The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog

I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes

As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls

Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical

University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life

[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada

If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte

Archives

Categories