Month: July 2022

TRUE FACT:  A recent study indicates that 95% of all “pouring-rights” contracts between large state universities and beverage companies such as Coke and Pepsi include provisions that reward schools for selling more drinks and/or penalize them if they don’t meet a minimum sales quota (Chronicle of Higher Education, July 22, p. 8).  

Less well-known, but potentially more disturbing, are merchandising agreements involving other products sold on college campuses.

For example, Trojan is the “official condom” of the University of Mississippi.  Whenever an undergraduate buys a package of Trojans, his or her major is automatically recorded at the checkout counter.  Each month during the school year, the academic department with the highest number of Trojan purchases per student receives $7,500 (plus one sex toy) for its discretionary use.

“It’s a win-win,” claims Matthew T. Farrell, CEO of the Church & Dwight Company, manufacturer of Trojans.  “Departments encourage students to have more sex, and safer sex, and that results in the departments benefiting financially.  In April we ran a special promotion for Trojan Ultra-Ribbed, and the demand was so frenzied that the campus bookstore had to extend its hours until 11:30 pm on Friday and Saturday nights.  The lines were out the door and halfway around the quad.  Couples were holding hands while they waited.  Heck, even Math and Engineering majors showed up.  I’m getting emotional just talking about it.”

Not everyone at Ole Miss is thrilled with this arrangement.  The University chaplain believes that the incentive program “rewards fornication and debauchery among young people.  College students should view their bodies as sacred temples, not as throbbing, spasmodic Silly Putty.  Moreover, I don’t think it’s right for academic departments to put big posters on their office doors asking, ‘Have you had sex today?  Why not?’  And don’t get me started on the disgusting collateral litter that the housekeeping and facilities staff have to deal with every Monday morning inside and outside of the residence halls.”

Things could be worse.  Check out the Frequent Snorter Program that Middlebury College has developed in collaboration with Mexico’s infamous Sinaloa drug cartel.  

 

According to a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, “one of the main objections to active learning is that…professors simply can’t cover as much content” (July 8th online).

This challenge will be front and center at Harvard Medical School in the fall of 2022, when the human spleen will be dropped from the school’s curriculum. 

Students who wish to learn about the spleen will have to do so on their own, says Medical School Dean George Q. Daley:  “There’s always Wikipedia, which is a much more credible source of information now than it was a decade ago.”

A faculty task force at Harvard recommended the deletion in a 75-page report released in May.  The report states that “the spleen is a low-profile organ when compared with such stalwarts as the liver, kidney, and pancreas.  Although the spleen can seriously malfunction, patients who experience such problems are typically poor.  By and large, Harvard-trained physicians do not treat poor people, and virtually none of our graduates accept Medicaid.  Our students are better served by taking more elective courses that focus on managing their stock portfolios.  Mistaking a patient’s spleen for his or her thyroid is regrettable, but failing to diversify one’s investments in anticipation of a bear market can devastate an entire family and its descendants.”

Community activists in the Boston area are vigorously protesting the decision (“More Spleen, Less Green”), while lawyers for Harvard claim that the school is simply exercising its academic freedom. 

 

 

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently noted that “over the years, colleges have employed a number of tactics to create the appearance of a more diverse student body than the one the institution actually has” (July 5th online).

True enough, but this phenomenon is simply the tip of the misrepresentation iceberg in higher education marketing.  Here are five examples from just the past few months:

—  A jury in Lewiston, Maine found Bates College guilty of placing photographs on its website that gave the impression the campus had more chipmunks than it truly had.  A Marketing staff member broke down on the witness stand during the trial, admitting that she had conspired with a local rodent trafficker to release over 500 Eastern chipmunks on the Bates quad an hour before a PR photography shoot was to take place.  

“College students love chipmunks,” the staff member observed.  “We hoped the critters would stay at Bates, but by nightfall virtually all of them had migrated to Bowdoin or Colby. What we did was wrong.  I understand that now.  We should never have used those photos.”

—  At Rice University, images of male Math professors were Photoshopped to remove pocket protectors and lengthen pants so that the cuffs were no longer 2 or 3 inches above the ankle.  “We just wanted our faculty to look like normal people,” said the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.  “Where’s the harm in that?”

—  Website photographs of New York University showed students sitting on lush, green lawns, conversing amiably, when the reality is, there are no lawns, lush or otherwise, on NYU’s urban campus.  When NYU students sit outside and talk, they typically do so in the middle of the street or atop a dumpster.  

—  Photos depicting the Registrar’s Office at Northwestern University show smiling staff members serving smiling students.  Surveillance videos from that office reveal that it has been 12 years since one of its staffers smiled.  That individual turned out to be mentally ill; she thought she was a Southwest Airlines flight attendant. 

—  93% of all outdoor photos on the University of Washington at Seattle website show blue, cloudless skies with bright sunshine.  When presented with National Weather Service data documenting the dominance of overcast, drizzly days on campus during most of the academic year, a school official claimed that the website photos “are meant to represent the cheerful, optimistic outlook of the U of W community, rather than a weather report.  Now get out of my office, you cockroach!”

Coming next week:  How tanned are all those undergraduates at the University of Miami?