Editorial
A League of Their Own
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The Big Red Men’s Basketball team is making a run at perfection. It’s three months into the season and the cagers are the team to beat in the Ivy League, undefeated and threatening for their first League title since way back in 1988.
All this winning has people all kinds of excited about Big Red basketball. It’s been more than 20 years since Cornell last scored an invite to March Madness and we want another shot at those Blue Devils before it’s all said and done.
No matter what happens over the next few weeks, though, the men’s basketball team has energized this campus. Home games are selling out, and Newman Nation is making a serious case for national sixth man of the year. Even the Palestra can’t rival this kind of enthusiasm.
The rejuvenation of Cornell basketball and the excitement generated by the team’s success remind us of how important athletics are to this University. Cornell is above all an institution of higher learning, but the Big Red functions best when its students are proud of the school they attend. Sure, school pride is about more than just a good basketball team, but there’s nothing like a long winning streak in the dead of winter to give morale a boost.
Cornell athletics, though, are in trouble. Limited by relatively weak financial aid packages, Big Red coaches can’t keep pace with the likes of Harvard, Yale and Princeton in the game of big-time college recruitment. The basketball team may be the talk of the Ivy League this year, but with more recruits opting for better financial aid packages at other schools in the Ancient Eight, we’re afraid the Red won’t stay on top for long.
It would be nice if Cornell could fix the problem by offering financial aid packages comparable to those available at schools like Harvard and Yale, but it can’t. With billions less in endowment, the University is simply unable to compete with the Harvards of the world when it comes to financial aid.
Nor can Cornell offer better financial aid packages to its athletic recruits than it does to the rest of the student body. Let’s not forget, after all, that the classroom comes first at this university.
Ultimately, the problem speaks to a larger issue within the Ivy League itself. Already a loose confederation of academically disparate schools, the League now faces the loss of competitive balance in athletics as well. Coaches and athletic directors can complain all they want about weak financial aid programs at their own universities, but without a coherent strategy to keep the competitive foundations of the Ivy League intact, that League faces an uncertain future.
The Ancient Eight has long been held together by the ties of tradition, but those ties are growing weaker by the day. As the eight programs of the Ivy League drift apart, it is the responsibility of the League as an institution to preserve the foundation on which that League was built. If the members of the Ivy League cannot work together to maintain competitive balance on the field of play, it may be time for the powers that be to reconsider what brought them together in the first place.
I've sent a letter to the US
I've sent a letter to the US senate requesting that the US government consider placing a tax on all educational endowments, regardless of the level of education, over a billion dollars: The Education Endowment Tax. All Education Endowment Tax revenue over and above administration cost would be distributed to publicly funded educational institutions and Open Courseware type projects that include the option to challenge for credit on completion of the course.