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

Beer and Circus: How Big-Time College Sports Is Crippling Undergraduate Education by Murray Sperber (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2000); 322 pp.; indexed; $26.00 cloth.

In Beer and Circus Murray Sperber vividly paints a picture of the pathetic condition of higher and lower education in the United States. In looking for the likely causes, this professor of English and American studies at Indiana University points his finger at big-time college sports and the special problems they present to undergraduates. In conclusion, he writes:

   Many universities, because of their emphasis on their research and graduate
   programs and because of their inability to provide quality undergraduate
   education to most of their students, spend increasing amounts of money on
   their athletic departments and use big-time college sports--commercial
   entertainment around which many undergraduates organize their hyperactive
   social lives [read: beer parties] to keep the students happy and distracted
   and the tuition rolling in.

After a close reading of this book, though, university officials and the professoriate--not big-time sports--would seem to be the primary culprits in down-grading undergraduate education.

Borrowing definitions of college student types, Sperber discusses collegiates, who like beer drinking, sports, fraternities, and sororities; academics, who enjoy studying and are, therefore, likely to be in the next cohort of professors; vocationals, those who work their way through college, including athletes in big-time programs with little energy or time left over for their studies; and rebels, throwbacks to the 1960s who prefer to demonstrate rather than attend classes.

Focusing primarily on collegiates, Sperber says they comprise up to half the student body at big-time sports schools. These students seem happy with the beer and circus offered or tolerated by university administrators. Just let collegiates have their keg of brew and the school's football, basketball, or other sport in a game, and these people will stay in college. Such students, of course, seldom bother going to class, except perhaps during the middle of the week when their team's not playing (though, increasingly--especially with basketball games--thanks to sports TV's need to fill airtime, college contests are on television almost every night of the week).

Big-time sports schools are usually known as "research" rather than "teaching" institutions. As a result, few professors want to teach undergraduates. And there's a good reason for this: professors at such schools are rewarded for being good researchers, not for being good teachers. Therefore many of these highly educated people are engaged in research--and doing it at the graduate level. Consequently, undergraduates are taught, if at all, by teaching assistants, often unpaid grad students, in lecture classes of several hundred college men and women. No wonder they prefer the beer and circus!

University executives do provide a good undergraduate education for academic-minded students. An "honors" program is made available. It features limited enrollment and smaller-sized classes and seminars taught by professors. In a real sense, it's a university within the university. Naturally, collegiates rarely want any part of it and couldn't participate even if they wanted to; vocationals don't have time for it; and rebels rarely bother with anything beyond their specific causes.

Surely, big-time sports diverts attention away from the school's stated purpose--higher education--and spotlights, instead, recreational activity. And although administrators publicly speak out against student drinking, according to Sperber it's mostly lipservice. Sadly, imbibing often leads to the more serious binge-drinking, which has resulted in incidences of death. Another unfortunate outcome of big-time sports is the problem of gambling by undergraduates. This is little discussed but is a growing problem on campuses across the country.

Perhaps the most shortchanged college students of all are the college athletes. They have to devote forty to fifty hours a week to their respective sport or associated work--practically year round. And while many receive scholarships, which certainly have value, they are restricted from receiving other funding. At the same time, their coaches are earning, in some cases, large salaries--even millions of dollars --per season.

Sperber recommends several avenues to help undergraduate education. De-emphasizing sports, he says--in the way that Harvard, Yale, and Princeton have--would be the quickest and best way of elevating education to its rightful place. He also says that universities ought to cut way back on graduate education; after, all, Ph.D.s are a glut on the market in many fields. And finally, research programs should be curtailed, which would free up professors to teach undergraduates who desperately need proper instruction.

Higher education is in a crisis. Many institutions' big-time sports teams are receiving more notice than their undergraduate educational programs. Parents, students, high school seniors, and educators should read Sperber's book and follow its lead. Professors more interested in teaching than doing research can take heart from it. And university administrators should reflect on its message.

James C. Sullivan is a freelance writer, living in South Bend, Indiana.