The Front Porch Examining The Increasing Interconnection Of University And Athletic Department Funding

Higher education and intercollegiate athletics have long had a complicated relationship. Examining the interconnection between the two and from a variety of theoretical and practical angles, this volume highlights many of the debates surrounding higher education and intercollegiate athletics and the financial dependency between these two long-standing entities. Topics include: a comprehensive history of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, an examination of the funding mechanisms utilized by intercollegiate athletic departments, an in-depth magnification of the increasing corporatization of higher education and athletics, and a look into potential future debates and lines of inquiry surrounding this topic. This is the 5th issue of the 41st volume of the Jossey-Bass series ASHE Higher Education Report. Each monograph is the definitive analysis of a tough higher education issue, based on thorough research of pertinent literature and institutional experiences. Topics are identified by a national survey. Noted practitioners and scholars are then commissioned to write the reports, with experts providing critical reviews of each manuscript before publication.

Higher education and intercollegiate athletics have long had a complicated relationship. Examining the interconnection between the two and from a variety of theoretical and practical angles, this volume highlights many of the debates surrounding higher education and intercollegiate athletics and the financial dependency between these two long-standing entities. Topics include: a comprehensive history of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, an examination of the funding mechanisms utilized by intercollegiate athletic departments, an in-depth magnification of the increasing corporatization of higher education and athletics, and a look into potential future debates and lines of inquiry surrounding this topic. This is the 5th issue of the 41st volume of the Jossey-Bass series ASHE Higher Education Report. Each monograph is the definitive analysis of a tough higher education issue, based on thorough research of pertinent literature and institutional experiences. Topics are identified by a national survey. Noted practitioners and scholars are then commissioned to write the reports, with experts providing critical reviews of each manuscript before publication.

COVID-19 and Higher Education in the Global Context: Exploring Contemporary Issues and Challenges addresses the lasting impact of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) in the higher education sector and offers insights that inform policy and practice. Framed in a global context, this timely book captures a wide variety of topics, including student mobility, global partnerships and collaboration, student health and wellbeing, enrollment management, employability, and graduate education. It is designed to serve as a resource for scholar-practitioners, policymakers, and university administrators as they reimagine their work of comparative and international higher education in times of crisis. The collection of chapters assembled in this volume calls for a critical reflection on the opportunities and challenges that have emerged as a result of the global pandemic and provides as a basis for how tertiary education systems around the world can learn from past experiences and shared viewpoints as institutions recalibrate operations, innovate programs, and manage change on their respective campuses.

In this thought-provoking new book, John C. Barnes examines the contemporary state of commercial college athletics as a guide for current and potential administrators, coaches, regents, and others involved in collegiate athletic operations and decision-making. Each chapter provides an overview of an industry shaped by such current realities as Title IX requirements, commercial investments, student testing, and television contracts. Barnes provides an accessible outline of the historical background and potential future of the commercial college athletics industry from a nonjudgmental perspective. Same Players, Different Game not only serves as a text and guide for governance and leadership but also as a primer for the economic and political realities of modern college athletics that students and sports fans will find fascinating.

This textbook presents a comprehensive analysis of organizational behavior in sport organizations from a practitioner's perspective. It covers issues related to managing employees and work teams as well as organizational structure and culture in sport. The book has four sections: Organizational Behavior in the Sports Industry, Getting to Know Employees and Volunteers of Sport Organizations, Work Groups and Teams, and Understanding the Organization. Each chapter begins with a practitioner interview describing a challenge that was overcome by their organization. That example is used to highlight applicable theories and interventions used in the industry. Additional examples or theories are discussed to provide students a broad picture of managerial issues in the sports industry and provide alternative approaches to intervention illustrated in the practitioner interview. The case studies offer the opportunity to practice and apply the ideas to real-world scenarios in the sports industry. Students using this book will gain an understanding of how managers and leaders apply theory to communicate with and engage employees to foster desired organizational cultures while being challenged to address common issues using cases and hypothetical situations.

This edited volume explores and deconstructs the possibilities of higher education beyond its initial purpose. The book contextualizes and argues for a more robust interrogation of persistent patterns of campus inequality driven by rapid demographic change, reduced public spending in higher education, and an increasingly polarized political landscape. It offers contemporary views and critiques ideas and practices such as micro-aggressions, implicit and explicit bias, and their consequences in reifying racial and gender-based inequalities on members of nondominant groups. The book also highlights coping mechanisms and resistance strategies that have enabled members of nondominant groups to contest primarily racial- and gender- based inequity. In doing so, it identifies new ways higher education can do what it professes to do better, in all ways, from providing real benefit to students and communities, while also setting a bar for society to more effectively realize its stated purpose and creed.

This book examines the gendered politics in the context of a merger of the women’s and men’s athletic departments at the University of Minnesota over a ten year plus span. Examining the athletic department merger helps us understand women's continual under-representation in University athletics despite Title IX legislation passing 40 years ago. Using interview with organizational stakeholders and archival document data, the book explores how organizational change in the form of a merger is gendered with relation to the premerger, merged, post-merger stages.

Abstract: Athletics' rise in importance on college campuses has been widely-documented (e.g., Frey, 1986; Putler & Wolfe, 1999; Sperber, 1990, 2000; Trail & Chelladurai, 2000; Zimbalist, 1999) and remains highly scrutinized by popular media outlets and select sport scholars. Increased importance of intercollegiate athletics within the sports landscape brought heightened scrutiny and calls for reform (Sperber, 1990, 2000). This study utilized stakeholder theory (Freeman, 1984) to look into the reform possibilities of three issues important to the functioning athletic department. These areas include the payment of student-athletes, over-commercialization in intercollegiate athletics, and academic difficulties and improprieties faced by student-athletes. Eight focus groups, a combination of participant observation and individual interviews (Madriz, 2000), were formed to gain perceptions of the aforementioned three important issues facing intercollegiate athletic departments. Five stakeholder groups closely aligned with a large, Division-IA athletic department, student-athletes (revenue and non-revenue), faculty members (familiar with sport and non-familiar with sport), coaches (revenue and non-revenue sports), athletic administrators and student-athlete academic support officers were chosen as parties with vested interests in the issues at hand. Themes that emanated from the participating stakeholder groups offered valuable insight into the views and perceptions of those groups toward athletic reform. For the most part, each stakeholder within the various focus groups, and across stakeholder groups, held similar views toward the reform issues investigated. Other thematic findings included the view that student-athletes are compensated fairly for their efforts on the playing field, but the time and effort they put forth on the field keeps them from gaining employment that helps pay various expenses. Also, commercialization in intercollegiate athletics is vital to the continued support of intercollegiate athletics, and any restriction would spell the end for non-revenue sports that are not widely-supported by the American population. Lastly, the academic welfare of the student-athlete is important to the athletic department, and for the most part, it believes it succeeds in educating and developing the intercollegiate athletic student-athlete. Numerous efforts are made by the various factions within the intercollegiate athletic organization that attempt to support the academic responsibilities faced by the student-athletes.

Big-time college sports embodies the ideals of amateurism and provides an important complement to university education. Or so its apologists would have us believe. As Andrew Zimbalist shows in this unprecedented analysis, college sports is really a massively commercialized industry based on activities that are often irrelevant and even harmful to education. Zimbalist combines groundbreaking empirical research and a talent for storytelling to provide a firm, factual basis for the many arguments that currently rage about the goals, history, structure, incentive system, and legal architecture of college sports. He paints a picture of a system in desperate need of reform and presents bold recommendations to chart a more sensible future. Zimbalist begins by showing that today's problems are nothing new--that schools have been consumed for more than a century by debates about cheating, commercialism, and the erosion of academic standards. He then takes us into the world of the modern student athlete, explaining the incentives that, for example, encourage star athletes to abandon college for the pros, that create such useless courses as "The Theory of Basketball," and that lead students to ignore classes despite the astronomical odds against becoming a professional athlete. Zimbalist discusses the economic and legal aspects of gender equity in college sports. He assesses the economic impact of television and radio contracts and the financial rewards that come from winning major championships. He examines the often harmful effects of corporate sponsorship and shows that, despite such sponsorship, most schools run their athletic programs at a loss. Zimbalist also considers the relevance ofantitrust laws to college sports and asks whether student athletes are ultimately exploited by the system. Zimbalist's provocative recommendations include eliminating freshman eligibility for sports, restricting coaches' access to "sneaker money" from corporations, and ending the hypocrisy about professionalism by allowing teams to employ a quota of non-students as well as to receive funding from the pro leagues. A mixture of lively anecdotes, hard economic data, cogent arguments, and clear analysis, "Unpaid Professionals will revitalize debate about a subject close to the hearts and minds of millions of Americans.