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Priority check, please.
Let's say you're a parent, or someone interested in high standards and academic excellence at America's colleges and universities. When you think of positive role models for college students, who comes to mind? Hopefully not someone who would instruct students to "study hard, but party harder," or offer lessons in "guidette stardom" that involve citations for disorderly and drunken behavior, or who would opine on the benefits of tanning beds to one's self esteem. And not someone who would cost you and your student $32,000.
But Rutgers University begs to differ. Last week, the Rutgers University Programming Association (RUPA) invited The Jersey Shore's "Snooki" Polizzi to come to campus, yes, for $32,000. That's coming out of money collected as mandatory student activity fees. At a time when tuition and fees continue to rise at institutions like Rutgers, and when parents' and taxpayers' pockets are stretched, is this the best use of a public university's resources ?
Rutgers continues to defend the decision, claiming that it is up to RUPA to provide entertainment demanded by students. Perhaps Rutgers ought to be focusing more on students' educational needs as well. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni What Will They Learn? report demonstrates that Rutgers students can graduate without even intermediate level foreign language, or economics, American history, or a literature survey. So while Rutgers values-literally-the Snooki brand of notoriety, one is left wondering what they value when it comes to their investment in student learning.
Students presumably pay a great deal of money at university to learn from the faculty - not tv stars. What next in the college-according -to - Snooki syllabus? Tanning beds in dormitories? So long as students want them, it appears. And so long as they will pay for them.
Posted by drizk on April 13, 2011 at April 13, 2011 04:59 PM
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