“[S]tudent fees and direct university support of the [Marshall University] athletic department’s budget nearly doubled since 2006.” “[T]he athletic budget has increased by almost $13 million, or nearly 75 percent, since 2005… [F]rom 2006 to 2012, the biggest growth in money to shore up the [athletic] budget was in direct university support, going from about $3 million in 2006 to $7.44 million last year.”
The faculty – compensated way below market, and in some cases up to thirty percent below market – have made bold to complain a little. That complaint has revealed something about Marshall that UD‘s not seen before at any American university. For significant segments of the Marshall community, professors as such represent a politically offensive barrier to the school’s true, exclusively athletic, identity. One of the highest profile local columnists ridicules and excoriates the professors and concludes
The radicals … just want a raise.
Much of the commentary on his column (and related columns) similarly dismisses professors as liberal scum, etc.
Reading around in the local press on the issue, UD thinks she has for the first time identified an American university willing to be honest about itself: Marshall sees no reason to sustain a faculty. A close look at the place points to the possibility that West Virginians are not educable. They can, however, be kept comfortable at large sports events. We can see Marshall, year by year, acting more decisively on this knowledge.
A combination of sports events and rocket-shot-out-of-anus lawsuits will keep the Marshall University administration rolling along nicely.
June 13th, 2013 at 4:16PM
“Chuck Landon is a sports columnist for The Herald-Dispatch.”
So faculty are only in it for themselves, whereas sports columnists are unbiased tellers of the whole truth?
June 13th, 2013 at 6:11PM
You know you had *some* merit to your argument for additional faculty compensation (despite basing it not on the broader, easily discovered information on the subject but instead on a singular, poorly referenced sports opinion column), until you took a cheap shot at the rest of the Marshall community (including professors), West Virginians and Huntingtonians.
The tone of your closing remarks in this really suggests what for 200 years has been typical of those piedmont and tidewater Virginians (and now greater Washington area residents). You know, the same ones from which our poor, uneducated, mountain people separated with the assistance of a Lincoln presidential proclamation 150 years ago next week.
Ah yes . . . While you’re making fun of those uneducable West Virginians, you might also want to compare the average MU professor salary with those dumb hillbillies they are attempting to educate.
June 13th, 2013 at 7:49PM
I wonder whether Killingsworth does outside consulting? Maybe the Marshall faculty could take up a collection? In fact, notwithstanding the fact that most university faculty are badly underpaid, I suspect someone could make a decent living doing forensic accounting for faculty senates, unions, and the like. Might be hard at private universities, though (FOIA can be a wonderful thing).
June 14th, 2013 at 7:29AM
Has there been any discussion of the university paying its sport entities to spin themselves off?
June 14th, 2013 at 8:24AM
Jack/OH: I don’t think there’s much need of that at Marshall. The whole thing is evolving toward a sports spin-off.
June 14th, 2013 at 10:13AM
Without athletics, no engineering, no finance, no medicine???? Methinks the sports columnist was well-lit on ‘shine when he typed that.
June 14th, 2013 at 10:47AM
UD, LOL! Yeah, I’m still afraid to admit that at some campuses academics are likely the fig leaf for the “real work” of the university: sports entertainment, sinecures for political buds, etc.
June 16th, 2013 at 6:05AM
Again, we’re talking about campuses that appear severely undermined by big-time, pre-professional sports. Intramurals and small-money intercollegiate sports don’t enter into this discussion, right?
June 16th, 2013 at 12:51PM
Right.
June 16th, 2013 at 11:32PM
[…] which seems to be (background here) working its way toward becoming America’s first faculty-free sports factory. A couple of […]
June 17th, 2013 at 7:37AM
You know, the same ones from which our poor, uneducated, mountain people separated with the assistance of a Lincoln presidential proclamation 150 years ago next week.
You folks were doing so well in the 19th century. What happened?
July 13th, 2013 at 9:03AM
[…] 6 letter from good ol’ Wade Gilley, president of Marshall University (background on Marshall here) in the ‘nineties. Wade went on to head the University of Tennessee but had to leave […]
August 31st, 2013 at 8:42AM
[…] the only university UD has characterized as well on its way toward becoming a faculty-free sports factory has now been officially ranked as just about the most embarrassing sports school in […]