Tuesday, February 09, 2010

Robbing the Cradle

By Richard Vedder

The University of Southern California has been rising in the US NEWS rankings through somewhat dubious means I suspect, hiring lots of expensive faculty, doing flashy things that raise ratings. We at FORBES/CCAP rankings have a different view about USC. The kids don't like the professors much, possibly because a lot of them don't speak English but write dull articles for dull journals for a nonexistent audience. We think USC is not in the top five schools in Los Angeles County using an outcomes based approach to measuring excellence.

Now the ultimate example of why this is not a real great university, but more of a tacky entertainment oriented school that venerates Bubbas more than Brains. The new football coach, recently arrived from Tennessee (home of the Escorts who tantalize high school seniors in order to sign them up for football), has signed a 13 year old middle school kid to play football whenever he gets to college in 2016 or thereabouts. Is there no end? Is there anything beyond the pale in intercollegiate sports? Why don't university administrations, the NCAA, the Pac10 or someone put a stop to this madness? Is USC a serious school dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge, or is it an exploiter of child labor for decidedly non-academic purposes?

1 comment:

davidjhemmer said...

Oh cut the coach some slack, once the kid gets to high school he falls under all the recruiting rules. I appreciate that he is thinking outside the box by recruiting middle school students, I'm going to send in some video of my son's t-ball to the baseball coach.