The Center for Science in the Public Interest booklet, Last Call (op. cit.), discussed the brewers’ 1980s marketing campaign, pp. 4—11. The departure of Arkansas from the Southwest Conference, and the influence of that school’s athletic department prompted many articles, including a lengthy analysis by Bob Boerg of Arkansas AD Frank Broyles’s role in the move (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 9/20/90). Diane Alters’s piece in the Boston Globe appeared 6/25/89; she also quoted industry experts James Mosher on the “life-and-death battle,” and Robert V. Shear, “Advertising doesn’t create cultural trends.” The New York Times described Bubba Smith’s experiences at the Michigan State Homecoming, and his resignation from the Miller Lite ads, 9/18/86 (no author given). Beth Ann Krier wrote about the genesis and growing success of the Spuds MacKenzie advertising campaign in the Los Angeles Times, 7/16/87; she also noted that Spuds “quickly became a cult figure on college campuses.” In reality, Spuds was a female bull terrier named Evie, owned by a Chicago suburban couple, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 10/6/93 (no author given). The MacKenzie brothers were Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas, and their skit appeared on various TV shows and commercials; they also made a film appropriately named Strange Brew (1983).
The “Education Life Supplement” of the New York Times, 11/2/97, had an informative article by Linda Lee on the relationship between filmmakers, including those working for advertising agencies, and colleges and universities. The article discussed how USC and UCLA “have entire offices devoted to scheduling shooting of films, television pilots, and commercials.” An inquiry to the USC office, 10/28/99, turned up the facts on the 1980s beer commercials. Cecelia Reed of Advertising Age discussed Spuds’s and Budweiser’s success at sports events, 4/27/87; and Matt Kilgore of the St. Petersberg Times described Spuds’s appearance at a minor-league baseball game, 6/26/87. Paula Span of the Washington Post analyzed Spuds’s sports connections, and discussed Spuds’s “crossover appeal” to women, 1/7/89. The Associated Press ran an article by Skip Wollenberg about Miller Beer’s clay figure animals, 12/8/88; Last Call (op. cit.) discussed the 1990 “Special Edition Coors Light Beer Can, Commemorating the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers’ Championship Football Season,” p. 9; and Melanie Wells of USA Today quoted Bob Lachky, Vice President of Brand Management for Anheiser-Busch, announcing Spuds’s retirement, 7/21/99. In the late 1990s, Anheiser-Busch based another highly successful advertising campaign around a number of gravel-voiced frogs; according to an article by Seth Schiesel of the New York Times, 3/10/97, the brewer’s website contained a biography of the lead frog, “Budbrew J. Budfrog … elected president of his college fraternity, and he likes to hang on the beach with a hot babe, a cold Bud and a folio edition of the Kama Sutra in the original Sanskrit.”
Edward Fiske wrote about “a favorite indoor sport among educational pundits” in the New York Times, 9/7/88.
5: Admissions Office Scams
David Reisman discussed “the student as customer” (op. cit.), p. 9. Many articles in higher-education publications and the popular media detailed the 1980s and early 1990s demographic crunch in college applicants, see Larry Gordon’s feature in the Los Angeles Times, 2/9/89; Pat Ordovensky’s cover story in USA Today, 10/15/90; Devin Leonard’s article in the Bergen (NJ) Record, 4/26/94. The quotes from Peterson’s Guide to College Admissions, Princeton, NJ, are in the 1991 edition: “Colleges [and universities] … are business enterprises” on p. 196; “the flavor of student life,” p. 47; and “Do you want an academically demanding college program,” p. 14. Ernest Boyer in College: The Undergraduate Experience in America (op. cit.) quoted the admissions official who admitted, “If we didn’t ask for the scores,” and the ad with the “ability to close” phrase, p. 34; that book also describes the “college fairs” of this period, as does Anne Matthews, Bright College Years: Inside the American Campus Today, pp. 21-28. The statistics on acceptance rates in 2000 are from the U.S. News annual college issue of that year.
Larry Gordon of the Los Angeles Times wrote about U.S.C.’s enrollment crisis, 9/7/90; in this period, the school endured one of its regular athletic department scandals, this one involving academically marginal athletes receiving special favors from the university; see Bill Brubaker’s article in the Washington Post, 10/1/91. Robert D. Hershey Jr. of the New York Times discussed “bait and switch” admissions office tricks, 9/20/98; Boyer (op. cit.) discussed “the appearance of the campus” and the typical campus tour, p. 17. The questionnaire results are from the survey for this book; see the “Preface” for a discussion of the questionnaire’s methodology. The University of Oregon made the Princeton Review’s 1999 top “Party school” list; the full citation for this edition of the guidebook is The Princeton Review: The Best 311 Colleges, edited by Edward Custard with Tom Meltzer, Eric Owens, and Christine Chung (New York, 1998).
Linda Lee of the New York Times discussed the Oregon setting for Animal House, and quoted school P.R. director John Crosiar, 11/2/97; the AP carried an item on the Ducks’ first bowl game in a quarter of a century, 11/21/89 (no author given). Lisa Birnbach described student life at Oregon in the 1992 edition of her guidebook (op. cit.), pp. 506—8; Louis Freed-berg of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote at length about the higher-education enrollment and funding crisis in Oregon and California, 8/3/93; Mary Dieter of the Louisville (KY) Courier-journal provided an overview of Myles Brand’s career at Oregon, and the quote from Oregon Professor Charles Wright that he “can work the alums at a football game,” 4/15/94. The article about Brand’s emphasis on big-time intercollegiate athletics at Oregon appeared in the Los Angeles Times, 7/12/90 (no author given); and the AP wrote about the 20 percent jump in freshmen applications after the Rose Bowl appearance, 12/13/95 (no author given). That article also noted that the Ducks were about to go to the 1996 Cotton Bowl and the school “will spend more than $1.4 million in expenses to play” in that contest, and possibly “make a $50,000 profit.”
6: The Flutie Factor
In this chapter, Insider’s Guide to the Colleges (op. cit.) and the Princeton Review (op. cit.) are cited at length, therefore it seems appropriate to begin with the following notes about these student guidebooks. The Insider’s Guide started in 1973 as a project of some Yale Daily News staff members and it surveyed mainly Ivy League schools. By the 1980s, it had evolved into a major annual guidebook, still connected to the Yale Daily News, and surveying over 300 colleges and universities. But it maintained the student point of view and, as a result, provided information that the stodgy traditional guidebooks ignored. It also outlasted its main 1980s rival, Lisa Birnbach’s book. Dennis Drabelle of the Washington Post quoted a D.C.-area high school guidance counselor on the Insider’s Guide to the Colleges: “It gives a good sense of a school from a student’s point of view,” 11/1/87. The Insider’s Guide’s full-time staff updates the annual surveys, and sends many interviewers into the field. Again, as with Birnbach’s work, the Insider’s Guide seems accurate in terms of the schools that I know well, and also parallels my research. As a result, I find its comments to be quite accurate.
The most controversial of the current guidebooks (since Birnbach discontinued her series) is the Princeton Review, started in 1991. Famous for its rankings of schools in various categories, particularly “Party school,” and despised by university officials whose institutions rank high on the negative lists, this guidebook works hard to back its findings with comprehensive research. It takes a huge sample of student opinion—56,000 questionnaires for its most recent edition, 2000—and determines its rankings based on the responses to its questionnaires. It explains that “the rankings are based directly upon what students on each campus tell us about their college,” multiplied across the country. As a result, the Princeton Review is an accurate sampling of student opinion. Not only does it explain its technique in detail on its web page, but on 10/9/98 I interviewed one of its editors, Paul Cohen, in Indianapolis at length about its questionnaires and sampling techniques and was very impressed with his information; also
see the discussion in the text of this book for more on its methodology.
Mary Burgan’s comments came in her article “Academic Careers in the Nineties: Images and Realities,” ADE Bulletin, fall 1990, p. 20. Many writers have tracked the “Flutie Factor” over the years: William H. Honan in the New York Times discussed it and gave the statistics for BC, 6/9/96; Los Angeles Times education writer Kenneth R. Weiss summed up, “The boost in applications or enrollment is usually short-lived, studies show. Swollen numbers usually recede the following year,” 3/29/99. Lisa Birnbach’s comments on Boston College appeared in her 1992 edition, pp. 246—49. The Insider’s Guide to the Colleges (op. cit.) published its comments about “the game-winning field goal” in its mid-1990s editions, quoted here from 1996; according to the 2000 edition of the Insider’s Guide as well as other guidebooks, BC is less of a party school than in the past. Apparently the debate about, and new legislation concerning, college student drinking in the State of Massachusetts in the late 1990s affected this school. A number of ESPN Radio announcers called BC “Notre Dame’s Evil Twin,” particularly Tony Bruno during and after the football point-shaving scandal.
Mike Dodd in a front-page story for USA Today, 4/11/97, quoted university admissions officers using the term “mission-driven athletics”; this story presents important statistics on a number of schools affected by the “Flutie Factor.” Ernest Boyer in College (op. cit.) discussed the impact of “‘The [College] Game of the Week’” on applicants, p. 12. The results from the polling of enrolled students are from the survey done for this book (op. cit.). Another irony of the photos of classes held on lawns is that many students consider them “blow-off periods,” often disappearing in the transition from regular classroom to lawn. The Syracuse sophomore made his comments in a P.S. on the web form of the questionnaire for this book, 10/10/99. Rebecca R. Dixon, an admissions official at Northwestern University, remarked on how “sports validates an institution” in an article by Mike Allen of the New York Times, 3/31/99.
Steve Weiberg and Jack Carey of USA Today dubbed Buffalo the “WORST TEAM” in college football, 10/13/99; Mike Harrington of the Buffalo News wrote about the defeat at Kent State, 10/31/99. Vice Provost William Fischer is the University of Buffalo official who commented in an e-mail on the faculty reaction to UB playing big-time college football, 11/10/99; despite the fact that his bosses might punish him after reading his comments, Professor Fischer agreed to stay on the record. He did the same in an article by Erik Lords on the UB Division I situation in the Chronicle of Higher Education, 12/10/99. Professor Fischer wins the Most-Stand-Up-Guy in Higher Education Award for his willingness to speak honestly and openly about big-time college sports.
UB president William Greiner spoke about the “quality of student life” in an article by Mark Gaughan of the Buffalo News, 7/13/99; and athletic director Bob Arkeilpane complained about “not having big-time college athletics at Buffalo” in an article by Jenny Kellner of the New York Times, 11/21/98. In the 1997 and 1998 editions of the Insider’s Guide (op. cit.), Buffalo’s out-of-state enrollment figures were 3 and 4 percent; however, in the 1999 and 2000 editions, the figures were “N/A” (not available). I wonder why?
Jay Oliva’s comments on “Every school wants to believe” were in an article by Jeffrey Selingo, Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/31/97. The Buffalo News covered the financial costs of UB’s joining the Mid-America Conference (MAC) in a number of articles over the years; particularly informative were pieces by Allen Wilson, 11/21/97; Mark Gaughan, 7/12/99; and Karen Brady, 4/16/97. The last named article also noted that the school passed on some of the intercollegiate athletics expenses to full-time undergraduates in the form of a $1.35 million increase in their annual fees—$200 per student per year—and the Chronicle of Higher Education article on UB (op. cit.) noted that the students were now paying $280 a year. Jerry Sullivan of the Buffalo News remarked that “Fans accustomed to seeing the [Miami] Dolphins won’t be too thrilled about Kent State,” 6/16/95. UB president William Greiner spoke about his ambitions for his intercollegiate athletics program in an article by Mark Gaughan of the Buffalo News, 7/13/99; in the same article, AD Bob Arkeilpane explained his parallel ambitions; these UB officials repeated their opinions in the Chronicle of Higher Education article (op. cit.).
The Princeton Review prints its rankings in part two of each edition; the Insider’s Guide lists schools by state, and within each state alphabetically—it has never changed SUNY-Buffalo’s name to the University of Buffalo, nor has the Princeton Review. William Fischer discussed the “negative halo effect” in an e-mail, 11/10/99.
7: Shaft the Undergraduates
Clark Kerr discussed “the mark of a university ‘on the make’” in The Uses of the University (op. cit.), p. 90, and the “inevitable side-effect,” pp. 64—65. His article, “The New Race to Be Harvard or Berkeley or Stanford,” appeared in Change magazine, May/June, 1991, pp. 8—15. In recent decades, various critics of higher education attacked the emphasis on research at the expense of undergraduate teaching; the most widely read was Charles J. Sykes’s Prof Scam: Professors and the Demise of Higher Education (New York, 1988). However, the most evenhanded and well informed commentary on this subject appeared in Christopher J. Lucas’s Crisis in the Academy: Rethinking Higher Education in America (New York, 1996); Lucas discussed not only “Upward Drift” universities, p. 214f, but also the critics and their positions, and he provided an excellent bibliography for all readers interested in the intricacies of this debate.
Stephen F. Aldersley wrote “‘Upward Drift’ Is Alive and Well” for Change, September/ October, 1995, pp. 51—56; he discussed the “potent drivers of institutional direction and decision-making” and provided many lists and charts on Upward Drift U’s from the 1970s to the mid-1990s. Ronald Simpson and Susan Frost in Inside College: Undergraduate Education for the Future (New York, 1993) explained Clark Kerr’s classification system for research universities, pp. 67—70. I used Aldersley’s lists (op. cit.) for the correlation between Upward Drift U’s and Division I college sports schools, and the U.S. News’s annual college issues (op. cit.) through the 1990s for the top 50 rankings of national universities. Many university administrators dispute the U.S. News rankings, particularly when their schools rate poorly on them, but almost everyone in higher education accepts the U.S. News lists as the standard poll and wants their school to achieve a high place on them.
Professor John E. Roueche of the University of Texas (Austin) discussed the “monolithic status system” in higher education in An American Imperative (op. cit.), p. 136. One of the best studies of Upward Drift and its effect on undergraduates appeared in the Chicago Tribune, 6/21/92 through 6/25/92. Reporters Ron Grossman, Carol Jouzaitis, and Charles Leroux studied the phenomenon at public universities in Illinois and adjoining states; the headline, “Colleges Find Follow-the-Leader is a No-Win Game,” 6/25/92, sums up the study’s conclusions. The Tribune series is far better than almost all articles in educational journals on the same subject, and it dramatizes the impact on individual students. Melinda Miller, editor of the U. of Illinois student newspaper at the time, was quoted in the 6/22/92 section of the series.
Rutgers professor Benjamin Barber wrote about his school in An Aristocracy of Everyone: The Politics of Education and the Future of America (New York, 1992), p. 196, and the “Ivy League university” with the “course off” prize, p. 197. Michael Moffat (op. cit.) wrote many chapters of his book on undergraduate education at Rutgers. Ernest Boyer in College (op. cit.) discussed the Carnegie Foundation’s findings on the time faculty spent teaching undergraduates, p. 121, and on the next page, the research prestige “goal” of Upward Drift U’s; the Carnegie findings on faculty time on research are on p. 128. Christopher J. Lucas in Crisis (op. cit.) has an excellent discussion on the “Faculty Reward System,” p. 195-96. Emeritus Professor Donald Gray of Indiana University recalled in an interview in Bloomington, Indiana, 10/19/99, that when he began his faculty career in the 1950
s, the standard teaching assignment was four courses per semester, and salary went according to years in rank. In the transition from the old method to the new research imperative in the late 1960s and 1970s, some young faculty drowned in Upward Drift: the promotion and tenure rules changed during their probationary period; for example, when they were hired, the criterion for sufficient research for tenure was a series of scholarly articles; when they were up for tenure, it had become a major book. If drowning faculty protested that they had devoted much of their time and energy to teaching undergraduates, this plea almost never saved them.
Faculty wangle out of regular teaching responsibilities in a number of ways: straightforward appeals to their department chairs for “more time to do research”; agreements in their contracts when hired or retained by schools; and trading “a lighter load now for a heavier one during future semesters”—which rarely arrive. In addition, some departments, particularly in the sciences, allow faculty to “buy their way out” of teaching responsibilities. The Chicago Tribune (op. cit.), 6/23/92, explained the latter process: “A professor in the U. of Illinois’ electrical engineering department … has a standard teaching load of three courses per year,” and that professor “can buy his way out of one of those courses by bringing in research funds equal to at least 17 percent of his salary, or about $20,000 on average. For such professors, the teaching load drops to one class each semester, about three hours per week in the classroom.”
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