Texas and Oklahoma: Please, please go to the SEC

I read today -- with obvious enthusiasm based on that headline you just read -- a report indicating the universities of Texas and Oklahoma are eager to join the Southeastern Conference. For the love of all things good, let's do it. It's long overdue. The next wave of conference realignment would set up 64 elite …

It’s time to remake the university athletics department

The athletics department — during good times, a blight on the university in the minds of many people within higher education — is under intense scrutiny in the coronavirus era. Recognizing that few athletics departments are financially successful, the critics are demanding athletics bear an oversized burden as financial decisions are made about the 2020-21 …

The competing messages from collegiate athletic departments ever clearer

In another blow to plans to get college sports fully up and running this fall, two more prominent universities have announced that student-athlete workouts have been suspended because of coronavirus. According to CBS Sports, Ohio State is pausing all voluntary athletic workouts, football included, after receiving the results of COVID-19 testing of its student-athletes, the school …

Collegiate sports for the benefit of the student-athlete and collegiate sports for the lust for money: The divide has never been clearer

Two headlines on Friday told a far deeper story than the mere words that were written. One story reported that Morehouse College was canceling its two fall sports — football and cross country — because of continued fears of coronavirus. The New York Times, which posted that story, quoted a Morehouse official saying, “Good management …

Higher education’s priorities for fall

The spring semester has ended. A summer of, well, we’re not sure of what, awaits. There’s only one certainty over the next few months for those of us fortunate to be in higher education: All of us must contribute to ensuring our campus is ready for the fall term, no matter how, and when, instruction …

Time for college coaches to accept big pay cuts?

The Guardian asks whether America’s well-paid collegiate sports coaches need to surrender significant portions of their salaries because of the coronavirus pandemic. The current questioning of coaches’ financial value may also bring a reckoning for other athletic expenditures, Fritz G Polite, assistant vice president of opportunity development at the Harry F Byrd, Jr School of …

University of Akron to close 6 of 11 schools

The Akron Beacon-Journal reports the president of the University of Akron is defending the cuts based on a predicted $70-million deficit. That number takes into account both “real and anticipated” loss of revenues for next fiscal year, Miller said. It was not clear from Miller’s message if the numbers include previously assumed deficits for next …

Brown president: Make students partners in getting our colleges reopened

Christina Paxson is the president of Brown University. In today's New York Times, she offers a sober, serious but cautiously optimistic evaluation of how U.S. colleges and universities can reopen in the fall. Her argument recognizes that college students can't fully thrive in an online-only learning environment. As amazing as videoconferencing technology has become, students …

Major cuts, including to athletics, coming to the University of Akron and other institutions

The photo above was taken outside my sister-in-law's house after a powerful storm ripped through her street a few years ago. The photo applies to what's happening at America's colleges and universities today: coronavirus has the potential to destroy the landscape of higher education. One university president has pulled the alarm warning on his campus, …