San Jose State Post Game Thoughts

OT, but perhaps of interest. The most recent issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education has as its cover story an article entitled: “An Academic Reputation at Risk: The U. of Oregon’s big brand masks its fragile standing.” (I’d provide a link if I could but I know it’s behind a subscription pay wall so it wouldn’t matter anyway.) I thought a few key passages of interest to readers of this blog were the following:

“The Duck is always up in everybody’s face. He shoves. He body-slams. He demands to be noticed. The University of Oregon’s mascot, a Donald Duck knockoff in yellow and green, is a pure distillation of the university’s iconic brand. This is a place, the duck assures us, of unapologetically splashy sports and irrepressible good times. The image sells remarkably well to undergraduates, whose numbers have increased by 25 percent in the past decade alone.

What has been more difficult however, is for Oregon to remain competitive with the top-tier research universities that it has for decades described as its peers. Save a few marquee programs, Oregon often fails now to measure up to higher education’s heavy hitters, which bring in more federal grants, produce more doctoral degrees, and boast higher education rates.”

Later in the article: “In recent years, the university has been known for all the wrong things. Professors and administrators have been at frequent loggerheads, arguing over the outsize role of athletics at the university and the thorny issue of campus sexual assault.”

deeper in: “Who among our peers, Oregon asked, produces fewer doctoral degrees per tenured and tenure track faculty member? No one. How many of our closest competitors bring in less federal money per professor? None.”

and of course, this: “Indeed, no discussion of university priorities at Oregon has been as hotly debated as the role of athletics, which has come to define the public image of the institution. Even within the wealthiest ‘Power Five’ athletic conferences, the Ducks are known for opulence and swagger.”

re: UO’s continued membership in the prestigious Association of American Universities, get this: ” . . . continued membership is not guaranteed. In 2011 the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, which was perceived as falling short on key research metrics, was booted out of the club. Expecting a similar fate, Syracuse University voluntarily bowed out the same year. The Association’s increased scrutiny of its members has created some anxiety at Oregon, which is often in the bottom quartile of the collective.”

And of course, the Nike connection: ” . . . any conversation about raising money in Eugene invariably turns to Phil Knight, the university’s supreme benefactor and the Ducks’ biggest cheerleader . . . . [The new president] says he spoke with Mr. Knight within days of being named president, and he met with the Nike co-founder a couple of times since. The president is coy about the details of those talks, and Mr. Knight was not made available for an interview. ‘I will say this: the man told me he had webbed feet, and that matters.'”

factoid: of the $847 million raised in UO’s current campaign 43% has been pledged to support of athletics.