Chuck Z said:
Yeah, and I think for much of its existence, it wasn't a major problem. I think that between the academic and financial issues now in play, the system is due for an overhaul and will probably look very different 20 years from now. Not saying college athletics won't exist, but I think they may be much more insulated from the universities than they are now.
My dream scenario is university spin-offs. The board of trustees remains the oversight committee of a nonprofit which controls 1 entity and is loosely affiliated with 2 others:
1.
University of Podunk, the educational institution, remains a nonprofit under the board of trustees, enrolls students, employs teachers, oversees classes, awards degrees. No "varsity" sports, no research. Professors know a lot about their subject, but they know way more about the art of teaching than they do about the cutting-edge, bounds-of-human-understanding areas of their discipline. After all, that's their sole job. They're welcome to write in their spare time if it enhances their eminence.
2.
University of Podunk Research Center, the grant-and-donation-funded research institution, employs researchers, solicits grants, and conducts R&D in useful arts. Its employees (who are at-will, not tenured) do not even pretend to have an educational mission. It pays a small licensing fee to the "legacy" university. It holds intellectual property derived from its research, and may license that out to enterprises. It is for-profit. Equity ownership is TBD, likely small stakes for the parent university, any major donors, and perhaps a non-voting stake for the federal government in order to capture an ROI on its grants that prove directly economically useful. Students at the parent university can try to get hired for research, and maybe there's a hiring preference, but you're doing work and getting paid taxable dollars for it and the people you're washing bottles for are not the people who are teaching you in classes. PhD grads can try to get hired by the research center, or by an educational institution, but they've likely specialized in one or the other in order to get there.
3.
University of Podunk Pandas, an association of for-profit sports clubs, who compete against other similar for-profit sports clubs. They hire athletes, sign them to contracts, and may sell those contracts to higher-level professional teams if the players turn out to be superstars. These entities are for-profit, and pay fixed, negotiated license fees to the parent university for the right to use the name, logo, and inevitably, the posh sports facilities that are currently on campus. They have also negotiated one special concession from the legacy university: the athletes that it employs (for at least X length of time, TBD) all enjoy the right to go to that university and get an education after their playing days are over. In the meantime, the association markets the shit out of the "school's" teams, to its alumni, schedules matches, agrees on rules and basically behaves as any pro-sports club team would do. The university may own a minority stake, or they may not, but the teams can be sold to the highest bidder or even offered IPO style to alumni who want to feel a pride of ownership.
You'll note how the last 2 are for-profits, with university licensing and minority, non-controlling ownership stakes owned by the university. The university can concentrate on its mission, earn a return from its "investments", and manage them at arm's-length without anyone worrying about how it was corrupting the academic mission. Researchers are not teachers, and athletes are not students (until and unless they want to be).
It's about as likely to happen as Tim Draper's plan to split California into 6 states: Sounds plausible (does it?), but incredibly unlikely to happen without some dramatic, society-shifting, likely traumatic event to catalyze it.
