OK, so here’s list of problems with Penn State.  First, some background.  My father’s life was changed for the better when he was given the opportunity to attend Penn State in the 1950’s.  This involved his ‘shaping up’ during his senior year in high school and getting a good SAT score.  It was the classic “upward mobility” story as my dad rose from humble beginnings to make quite a good life for his family.  My brother, sister, and I all ended up getting degrees at PSU as well.  So we are definitely a PSU family and for the most part had positive experiences with the university.  

Closing the Door

Back when I went to Penn State in the late 70’s and early 80’s, tuition was an affordable $1500 per year for “in-state” students and a roughly 800 SAT score got you in.  Penn State was an unpretentious university that gave lower-middle-class Pennsylvanians a great educational opportunity.  Although it was not hard to get in to and not overly expensive to attend, no-one was coddled and students had to work hard to graduate.  A PSU degree didn’t raise the eyebrows that Yale or Harvard did, but among graduate schools and prospective employers the school’s reputation was sound.

In the past few decades, four-year colleges have become characterized by extravagant tuition costs and prohibitive admission requirements.  Between 1980 and 2000, college tuitions went up roughly 270% (compare to median income, which increased only 100% in that timeframe).  In 2005, USA today listed good’ol PSU as THE most expensive state school for in-state students, with an annual tuition of nearly $11,000!  Moreover, unless you had nearly straight “A’s” in high school and an SAT score of over 1200, you might as well not bother applying.  As the cost go up, it becomes harder for PSU’s traditional student base to attend without going into debt. 

Yes, this change has been accompanied by somewhat of an increase in PSU’s reputation, but I’m not sure this benefits the students.  We all know that conducting state-of-the-art academic research involves a completely different skill-set from that needed to be a good instructor.  PSU’s highbrow reputation, gained since joining the BigTen’s research cooperative, doesn’t mean students are getting high quality instruction.  Hence, I favor having the majority of students (including my children) get their basic work done at community college, where the quality of instruction is higher for basics (I’m a community college professor – hence my bias), and then going to a large school where the research experience of the faculty can benefit students in their upper level courses.

About PSU’s Mission

The use of four-year college curricula for skills-training is extremely inefficient.   As a flexible and well trained workforce becomes more critical, it is harder to justify taking four years out of someone’s life to prepare them for a career, especially since the job market may change dramatically from the time a student declares his/her major to when he/she graduates.  In the future, I hope that rapid-learning centers and apprenticeships will replace the antiquated university system.   

At this point, the rote academician’s response is to point out that the purpose of university life goes way beyond job-training.  Here is my next problem.  When I was still contributing to the PSU alumni association, I received a monthly periodical called The Penn Stater.  This rag, as much as any single factor, soured me on PSU.  I was treated to an endless series of stories glorifying students who majored in arcane fields, left school to travel the world, dropped out to “find themselves”, etc.  It was clear that of self indigent “experiences” of this sort were favored over the mundane aspects of, say, engineering.  I really got sick of reading about over-privileged slackers being held up as poster-children for what it means to be a Penn Stater.  This rot went clear to the rags coverage of sports: a basketball coach who bailed on his team right before the season to take a cushy “golden-parachute” job at the athletic department was canonized as a hero who chose family over “big-time sports”.  
The last straw for me came when this fluf-rag had the nerve to direct snarky, critical comments at Joe Crispin, an overachieving PSU basketball player who, while undersized and not heavily recruited, drove his team to its only Sweet-16 appearance in my lifetime.  In short, someone who epitomized what I used to think PSU was all about was ridiculed by the school’s own alumni magazine.  I cancelled my subscription here.

I have other issues, such as the presumed crack-down on campus drinking, which has funneled drinking off campus to apartment complexes where is more dangerous for students.  I think I’ve said enough for now, though.

What About the Football Team?

Ah yes, JoePa’s boys.  Up until two weeks ago, I maintained a strong allegiance to the Nittany Lions even after I had become disillusioned with the university in general.  Of course the PSU administration approaches football with the same hypocrisy as it does everything else:  ticket purchases are tied to alumni association contributions, and the team has loaded up their schedule with money-making home games against creampuffs:  never mind how this hurts the teams chances of winning a championship, or how long-term rivalries are abandoned, it’s all about the money here.  But I could forgive this if the team still played well.  The game plan against a weak Michigan team, resulting in a humiliating ninth consecutive loss to them, bordered on malfeasance.  As long as coach Paterno considers offensive coaching positions to be patronage jobs, the team will continue to frustrate its fans.  Of course, I don’t have to decide whether Paterno should step down, I just have to decide how to spend my Saturday afternoons.  With a family and a full life ahead of me, I refuse to waste time and emotional energy following a deliberately ineffective team representing a university I no longer respect.

OK, I feel better getting that off my chest.