Customer Reviews

Beer and Circus: How Big-Time College Sports Is Crippling Undergraduate Education

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This latest effort by Prof. Murray Sperber, who made himself almost famous recently by taking the semester off from Indiana University to avoid the Bobby Knight cauldron, should be read by every concerned layman, university president, trustee, faculty member and investigative journalist. Sperber's larger theme -- that universities have abandoned undergraduate education for research while pushing the college kids toward beer-and-circus seven-day weekends -- is well illustrated. He also notes how university administrations have sharpened their accounting methods to make it harder and harder for anyone to keep track of how much XXXX money --- I almost said beer -- they actually pour into their intercollegiate programs. Reviews in major publications have run from warm to enthusiastic. Sperber's one-semester sabbatical from IU seemed to me like overkill a few months ago, but now that the IU president himself has sought off-campus shelter I don't think Sperber was off the mark at all. His book is a bull's-eye. His earlier seminal work -- College Sports, Inc. -- could have been titled The Emperor's New Clothes. It's worth reading today. I understand he has another book in the works. If enough people read what he says and then talk to each other then perhaps the system could be shamed into the radical change it needs. That includes a return to needs-based scholarships and the end of the one-year athletic scholarship that is plainly a salary for work.

Sperber does a good job of documenting the general decline in the quality of undergraduate education in the United States. The book overstates and is a bit untempered, but the overall description of contemporary college life - students ignored by faculty and drinking away their four years - isn't that far off the mark. Don't let the subtitle fool you. Beer and Circus is about far more than the degradation of universities due to their emphasis on scholarship athletics. The abandonment of undergraduates is due to many other causes that Sperber discusses as well. Sperber is very sympathetic to the plight of the student trying to get a good education. His heart is in the right place. Beer and Circus won't delight college presidents, but could well serve as a call to arms by those consumers, the parents and students, who are paying large sums of money for education and are getting short changed.

Sperber has been one of the most incisive observers of college sports since the publication of College Sports, Inc. Since then he has written perhaps the definitive history of Notre Dame during the Knute Rockne years.

In this book he brings the story of college sports and all its attendant ills into the decade of ESPN and the unholy alliance of "24/7" sports broadcasting, alcohol manufacturers and distributors (e.g. "Spuds MacKenzie" and the proliferation of "sports bars"), and university administrations which have turned relatively petty corruption into big business. Sperber, a former fraternity president, knows all too well that there are many different college students, but even the unreconstructed "party animals" are not his targets, rather it's the broadcasting/advertising/admissions complex mentioned above. The consequences range far beyond the "professionalization" of college sports to being a factor--albeit one factor--in the decline of undergraduate education itself.

Sperber played the role of Cassandra at Indiana through the Bobby Knight years and for his trouble been emailed death threats. More proof that the truth hurts and some people can't handle it. Also recommended is Hoberman's DARWIN'S ATHLETES (hell, anything Hoberman writes is recommended).

There is not much doubt that undergraduate education for the typical student at large universities is most unsatisfactory: one is, with few exceptions, a nonentity with no opportunity to shape the educational experience. The only option is to follow the rules; then it is swim or sink. Furthermore, there is no doubt that forming farm teams for professional leagues with substandard students has no place in a university.

The author shows through his survey data that major sports teams in Division 1-A of the NCAA give a focal point to the incessant partying that occurs at most major, large universities. It is the essential point of the book that college administrators are more than willing to give undergraduates "beer and the circus" of big-time sports in lieu of drastically overhauling undergraduate programs. The need for tuition dollars leads large colleges to pack freshman courses, virtually precluding a chance to learn. Sports and partying is the cynical substitute.

Clearly, the prestige focus of top college officials precludes quality education for most students. It is all about image and reputations. Good sports teams increase recognition. So do adding prestigious faculty, engaging in research for corporate America, and having special, honors education for a select minority of undergraduates. The author makes abundantly clear that well-known faculty and elaborate research do not benefit the typical student. Furthermore, athletic programs are invariably a drain on the finances of the university. Even with Fat TV contracts, athletic programs are net losers.

The author breaks down the main student subcultures into "collegiate, vocational, rebel, and academic." They have different goals and different problems interacting with the substandard educational regime. The fact that the party element, the collegiate group, is content, or resigned to, with the current educational situation hardly justifies the de-emphasis on education.

The author does briefly touch on the purposes of college education. Is college mostly a social experience; is it to obtain job skills; or is it to be liberally educated. And do colleges actually support all of those goals for all students.

There is much wrong with universities and the author makes some effort to shed light on the problems. But much more can be said. Should universities perform a special social role, or are they simply big corporations looking out for the bottom line, cutting costs where they can, while paying lip service to a grand mission? It is clear that universities will not perform that mission with the distorting impact of big time sports.

This is the perfect book to analyze the effects of college sports on institutions of higher learning but also much more. This books starts by classifying students into four basic groups and describes what are the motivations of each group as it relates to a college education. I found this to be a very elementary but appropriate evaluation which clarifies why some things are as they are. The author also had sent out surveys, although not scientifically done, from which to draw conclusions. It nevertheless, was insightful concerning students feelings about athletics and their education.

The surprise for me in this book was the historical analysis of college enrollment and marketing to prespective students in the last thirty years. Included in this, the author was very critical of the "learning environment" and teachers who want to research but not teach. This was a subject which I had not seen so effectively addressed.

Yes, Murray Sperber is critical of college athletics. But I think his presentation was as balanced as possible with this bias and spared no one in his recommendations for improvement.

Without giving away the ending, his conclusion is titled, "What should happen vs. what probably will happen." The author has given his subject great thought and presented the reader with good evidence. But I think the author realizes he is tilting at windmills and the ultimate conclusion which may come within 10 years will be painful. Particularly for a dedicated educator.

I love college sports, especially basketball, but college sports has serious problems. Things have gotten so bad that sports are sometimes getting in the way of education. Sperber has done his research well and identified the problem well. Sperber is not the typical granola-eating sports hater; he knows too much about college sports not to be a knowledgeable fan. But he also knows the system is sick and needs to be fixed. This book makes me glad I chose to attend a Division III school.

Earlier reviewers' criticisms that claim Sperber overstates his argument are oblivious to the economic politics of book publishing. It is common place for authors to rescind control over book titles as publishers continue to market books based on their "cover" not on their content. In fact, Sperber argued with Henry Holt and Company over the subtitle because, he claimed, it overstated what his data suggested.

Anyone who actually read--and paid attention to--the limitations of this work as set forth in the "Preface" would know that. But, given the sophmoric banter that apologists for the interests under scrutiny have advanced in previous reviews, it is evident that they did not attend to them (the limitations). Anyone who claims that the over-emphasis placed on binge drinking in college communitites--which is really Sperber's argument (college communities not college campuses)--is defensible is blind to a significant matter of public health and is merely in denial.

Sperber makes clear that he is neither anti-college athletics NOR anti-Big Time University. Anyone coming away from this work believing so both embodies and performs his argument about the climate in which "quality" education is currently marketed.

In the end, Sperber's work functions to explain, simply, ONE of the many factors contributing to unhealthy, addicitive, and destructive environments in which college students currently find themselves. He doesn't claim to do anything more, so when he doesn't I'm not sure why he receives mis-placed criticism

For all its faults, this book honestly changed the course of my life. I read it shortly before applying to college. I was, and remain, a serious college sports fan, and prior to reading Sperber's book I looked at teams that did well in football and figured, well, I'll go to one of those universities. Then I read Sperber's book.

Sperber argues that sports-and-party-based frat-boy culture is being capitalized on by colleges, who market their party atmosphere and great sports teams to draw in an ever larger pool of applicants. They then take the tuition money and spend it on their prestigious grad programs, not to mention millions for the advertising, er, athletic department, which draws in ever more applicants. Meanwhile, the universities don't spend any significant money on their undergrad programs. They hire great faculty but then treat their undergrads to 750-person lecture halls taught by assistants, not the hot-shot professors that are advertised. They have rampant grade inflation. They accept virtually everyone and let just about anyone through, degrading the quality and relevance of the undergraduate degree. Thousands of students might not learn much or get a good, comprehensive education, but they will have a drunken good time doing it, and the university still gets the tuition money.

This book has some problems. It makes sweeping sociological generalizations of college culture (any school with 30,000 or 50,000 students cannot be fairly divided into three or four categories of student, as Sperber attempts). It has an obsession with the movie Animal House. It sometimes strays from its general thesis into other complaints. It's easy to come away with the general impression that a degree from a large state school is worthless, as is the education. (I think a fairer statement would be that you CAN get a good education from a large state school, but it's very easy to get a degree WITHOUT having gotten one.)

But the important message is this: big-time universities are using big-time college sports to draw in collegiates to an entertainment-based college experience, skimping on their undergrad programs, and using the tuition money to further fund sports teams and their extensive graduate programs to enhance their name and prowess. It's an academic pyramid scheme. The moral: for graduate education, go to Division I State U. For undergrad, try a DIII liberal arts school. Largely because of this book, that's what I did, and I haven't been disappointed.

Few would question the growing imbalance between academics and athletics at "big name" universities. The problem is not a simple one, and certainly not a simple conflict between undergraduate teaching and televised football and basketball at major research universities. Honors programs at mammoth schools may offer small classes, but its unlikely that they'll solve the problem either.

While the anecdotes are colorful and disturbing, Sperber's research is flawed by the manner in which he collects and reports data. Passing out surveys in his class and posting a questionnaire on a web site do not produce representative, meaningful numbers or conclusions, although he draws repeated inferences. It is not at all obvious that the demise of big-time athletics would restore excellence to undergraduate teaching and, if he looked harder, he'd find that some honors programs provide little rigor. And I doubt some of the faculty would be up to the rigors of teaching four or five classes of demanding students. Sperber's best conclusion is the "don't bother me and I won't bother you" truce between partying students and uninvolved faculty. Faculty can make a difference, but they have to first put in the effort. And paying "student" athletes is not the solution; it would make things worse. Parents and students have surrendered their responsibilites to EARN an education. What did they think they were getting when they enrolled? Are parents and students that rich and that dumb that they don't care? don't ask? don't know?

Universities are no longer the refined temples of wisdom Sperber remembers. As millions of students poured into universities and they became big business -- they have replaced steel mills as the factories of our age, "knowledge factories" -- and marketing and mass production were sure to follow. All we need are some discerning customers.

I was raised on SEC sports, and a huge Tennessee fan my entire life. I graduated from a NAIA school with a nationally ranked football team, but being a late bloomer from an academic standpoint, a vocational, as well as a Gamma Delta Iota, I was unaware of the magnitude of the problem facing large public universities regarding the mix(er), no pun intended, between academics and athletics. While the book is well written and contains an enourmous amount of statistical information, it does indeed break my heart to realize that higher education has stooped to this level. I'm thankful that I received a good liberal arts education from my small (1200 enrollment) NAIA school.