A new report is taking a look at how well universities integrate and align athletics into their academic institution.
“Several people are worried about the drift of college athletics to more of a professional model than an academic model,” said William Anderson, who was sent to represent MSU at the Coalition of Intercollegiate Athletics conference.
The coalition was formed in 2002 and is a national alliance of 55 Division I-A faculty senates. The report was generated in June.
It represented a faculty perspective, Anderson said. There may be nothing MSU would have to change because, comparatively, MSU is in better shape than several other institutions, he said.
“(Academic institutions) were concerned about the escalating costs of college athletics especially at the Division I-A level and the fact that you have a lot of television revenue at stake,” he said. “There is almost unrealistic pressure to win, and there is a question about how this is all going to end.”
For example, he said, the Duffy Daugherty Football Building was state of the art 10 to 15 years ago and now has to be renovated to stay competitive with other institutions.
There are four members from MSU’s Executive Committee of Academic Council tasked to see whether MSU matches up with the report’s recommendations, said Anderson, the subcommittee’s chairman.
Then the subcommittee will inform the executive committee, which then forwards it to Provost Kim Wilcox. He will either act on any, part or none of it, he said.
Athletic Director-Designate Mark Hollis said the report is an important component in recognizing opportunities that lie ahead in increasing dialogue with every department on campus.
“It focuses on some very important issues,” Hollis said. “It is good to review and look at what practices are being done at the institutional level.”
He said there probably won’t be a huge reform, but it also doesn’t mean changes won’t be made.
Michael Kasavana, faculty athletics representative, said there are several items in the report that MSU already does.
Some of the recommendations looked at how well student athletes were performing in class, Kasavana said. The Big Ten Conference does a lot of detailed reporting about students and a lot of reporting is done on campus in regards to monitoring classes and independent study.
“We have more stringent standards than most other conferences, and we have more stringent standards than the NCAA,” he said.
“There are a lot of areas we already comply with.”
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