IDS 1: The Promoting Fairness and Equality in Education Act (Debating)

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

I'd welcome any feedback from the Governor and my fellow legislators, but I think this bill does a pretty good job addressing a number of important weakness within our public education system.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

I like the theory of making college more open to those who are not as able to afford it, but some of the provisions are questionable to me, particularly a quota system on income and forcing those requirements on private colleges. This will be something we can work on.

I don't think we can justify having a race-based quota system, but not an income-based one given where society is today.  As for the idea of a quota system itself, I'd certainly be interested in hearing any alturnatives as I'll admit it is far from perfect.  Regarding private colleges, no one is making them take regional money for research grants.  But as you say, we can work on this.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Quota systems have been ruled to be illegal by the Supreme Court countless times, so this bill wouldn't even be constitutional.

I am all for diversity, but this isn't the way to go about it.

Also, the last part is something I can't support. I'm not going to kill college athletics. A lot of those scholarships are supported by boosters anyway, not state funds.

The colleges should be spending that money on merit-based academic scholarships.  They are supposed to be academic institutions and have no business giving out scholarships to people just because they happen to be good at sports.  If the outcome of fixing this problem is the death of college athletics and the constant scandals that go with it, so be it.  I certainly won't shed a tear.  Colleges should not be giving out scholarship money to people just because they can play football.

As for quotas, I'm pretty sure part of that Civil Rights bill the Senate passed also established quotas (although I could be mistaken).  If so, I don't see why that is constitutional and this isn't.  In any event, as I told Speaker Maxwell, I'm happy to hear alturnatives to quotas (an imperfect solution, to be sure), but so far I haven't seen any alturnative proposals for how to deal with this problem.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

One idea I had was encouraging growth of poorer families in schools through some level of regional subsidization of those students.

I'd be open to that, provided there is enough money for it. 

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

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AFter much delay, I have an amendment.

Await any objections.

This looks good, although the sports scholarship part is important.  Sports scholarships simply have no business existing.  These institutions are (especially the public ones) meant to be academic institutions.  I realize treating them as such would mean we might not be able to get our college sports fix, but that's no where near as important as making sure Atlasians have access to a quality education.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

The large majority of college athletes (at least in the two largest sports) live in poverty as it is. The problem is even worse in the South. You might be adding a small level of fairness (hypothetically accepting an 1000 low-income SAT over an 880 or something, I don't know what our schools' minimums are for athletes), but at what cost? Plus the revenues brought in by those two programs plus baseball in the South more than justify paying for the full cost of attendance (i.e. more than a scholarship) and can usually cover the scholarships of non-revenue athletes while still leaving the school some level of funding.

I'd really urge the legislature to consider that. I say all this not just as a fan of collegiate sports but as someone who cares deeply about education and modestly likes the premise of this bill.

I'm willing to consider removing that part if it can be replaced with an amendment that allows for far greater and more independent oversight of college athletics programs.  It is a disservice to the students with sports scholarships when their professors are "encouraged" to artificially inflate their grades so that they can keep playing sports for their college.  Universities clearly need some serious independent oversight because scandal after scandal (Penn State being one of the more recent ones) has shown that universities are often more than willing to ignore or even actively work against the interests of their students to protect a skilled coach or player.  Grades get inflated or outright rigged not to drop below a certain level, people look the other way in cases of rape, etc.  I'm open to compromising on this in the interest of getting an important bill passed, but I'm not open keeping sports scholarships without any reforms/greater independent oversight of college athletics.  Hopefully you can at least see where I'm coming from on this.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Has no one here heard of the NCAA? They are the independent oversight of college athletics. It's not like these schools are willy nilly out there doing as they wish without consequences.

This whole witch hunt against college athletics makes no sense to me. They do a lot of good for athletics and universities. And the scandals are just a small portion of the athletes that attend these schools. They're bad, yes, but no reason to outlaw or severely change how the system works.

Dude, I trust the NCAA about as much as I trust a tabacco company to look out for public health.  If the NCAA has consistently proven one thing, it's that they exist to exploit college students.  They even admitted coming up with the term "student-athlete" in order to avoid having to pay athletes workman's comp. for severe injuries they recieve during games.  The NCAA isn't the solution, they're part of the problem.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Has no one here heard of the NCAA? They are the independent oversight of college athletics. It's not like these schools are willy nilly out there doing as they wish without consequences.

This whole witch hunt against college athletics makes no sense to me. They do a lot of good for athletics and universities. And the scandals are just a small portion of the athletes that attend these schools. They're bad, yes, but no reason to outlaw or severely change how the system works.

Dude, I trust the NCAA about as much as I trust a tabacco company to look out for public health.  If the NCAA has consistently proven one thing, it's that they exist to exploit college students.  They even admitted coming up with the term "student-athlete" in order to avoid having to pay athletes workman's comp. for severe injuries they recieve during games.  The NCAA isn't the solution, they're part of the problem.

Well, ok, then what do you suggest? Government oversight of college athletics?

I'm actually not opposed to that, tbh, but that is a matter for another day.  This bill has multiple purposes, btw, to answer your question.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Well, I'm okay with the bill aside from the sports scholarship banning. As long as that's in there, it'll be a no go for me.

I'd rather have part of something than all of nothing.  In that spirit, much as it pains me, I'll agree to an amendment removing the sports scholarship section.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

     I would assent to abolishing sports scholarships, on the proviso that the prohibition were only on the use of public funds for that purpose. If some wealthy alum wants to endow an athletic scholarship, that's up to them. But I don't think taxpayers should have to support it.

I'd be fine with that compromise.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Another point I want to make is if we make this law and defund scholarships for athletics, students will just go to other schools in other regions and we can watch enrollment in our schools decline and the educated population leave.

This would be bad for all of us in this region. A lot of people don't just chose colleges for what they want to study. They chose them for the extracurriculars.

Colleges should first and foremost be academic institutions, not athletic institutions.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

     I was going to say that nobody I know chooses based on the sports team...except it occurs to me that in the South they probably do. College sports is much more important in this region than it is in the Bay Area where I live IRL. You're right, Duke; reducing funding for athletics would probably have a very negative impact on the region's schools.

     With that said, how about this? Our schools reach out to a group of their wealthiest alumni to endow athletic scholarships, and for each one that does we reduce our support by a commensurate amount. Considering how conservative our region is, I think there'd be some real interest in "buying out" government support of the universities here. College athletics would continue to be funded and we would be able to withdraw funds to budget towards emergencies, other initiatives, or refund to the taxpayers.

But then wouldn't you be essentially redistributing funding from academics to athletics?

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Bump

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

I object to Speaker PiT's amendment.

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

That looks fine.

I think we all know how to best cut spending at these schools, but it would involve having a discussion no one wants to have given how it is political suicide to discuss it.

But paying coaches millions and millions of dollars isn't wasteful spending, right?

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Nay

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Abstain