Ridiculous Priorities

 When I was a university student, I worked hard for every cent necessary to get my education. I often worked at two or three jobs, and swept together the money to pay for room, board, books, and tuition. One day my junior year, I entered a classroom on test day, ready to take the test after having studied far into the night. I had basically ruined my GPA by goofing off the first two years and was determined to get as close to a 4.0 in my remaining two years (it turned out to be two years and two terms of summer school) to get my GPA to a respectable point and get a degree I could actually use.

By that time, my professors knew me, and knew I was trying. So, when the professor that day got ready to hand out the tests, he told me he needed to talk to me first. He sympathetically showed me the note on the class roll he had gotten that day. My name had been flagged, and I was not to be allowed to take the test. It appeared I had "delinquent" dues on my dorm rent, and I had been suspended indefinitely. I assured him that I was certain I was up-to-date on my dues. He finally decided that he would let me take the test but hold it until I had cleared this up. I'm sure I didn't do as well on that test as I had planned to do, as I was distracted by the disturbing news.

As soon as I finished, I went to the financial office to see what had happened. In those pre-internet days, you paid in person, and I paid my dorm dues monthly. I had two choices: I could use the university postal system, which meant dropping my check in their box and it being picked up -- that had always worked before -- or going to the office (where I was going now), and standing in line for a while, which I had to do that day.

I finally got to talk to someone: a student about my age whose sole job was to read the printout and tell me I was no longer a student in good standing because I was delinquent in my payments. Anyone who could do something about it was safely hidden behind closed doors while I was left to plead with a student on minimum wage who was only working to try to pay her own dues and had no power to send me to someone who could fix things. I will shorten the long story here by saying that, eventually, I was able to clear my name. The internal mail system of the university had failed to deliver and process my check on time -- for a week it had apparently been sitting in a bin on someone's desk. When it finally cleared, I was mailed a statement that my account was again in good standing, and I could attempt to make up the work I had been forbidden to do in all my classes.

That was it. No apology. No acknowledgement that the error was theirs, that the "delinquency" was due to their oversight, not mine. I was left with the responsibility taking the printed mailing (which came a few days later) and begging all my professors to let me make up my work, without penalty, if possible.

I need to add that my "delinquency" was a little over $100, the amount of the delayed check, which clearly showed the date I had written it, several days in advance of the due date. The university had kicked me out of the system over a hundred bucks (yes, good days, when a month in a dorm, including food, was $100. But remember that, back then, minimum wage was $1.60 an hour).

Now, a seemingly unrelated story. This past week, a prominent university in my state fired a football coach. I know, that happens all the time. But what made this newsworthy to me was that, while he was working for them, he was making millions of dollars, and now that he was not, he was going to continue to be paid millions. If I read the article right, they are committed to over $70 million, whether he works or not.

Let's put it in context. That campus has, maybe 150,000 students. I'm sure they are having to pay room and board and books and tuition. I know prices are higher than the $100 monthly I was paying back in the 70s. Having put four kids through school, I also know that whatever the price, if they don't pay, they have to leave. My wife and I did a lot of work to make sure that didn't happen to them, and my children rolled up their sleeves and worked to help the cause.

I'm trying to figure out how the same university that would send a kid home for missing a month's room and board could be the same university that would fire a football coach and say, "Oh, what the heck. Just keep the money." I also realize that they will have to pay someone else to take his place. How could these two worlds co-exist? Some students cannot come up with the money, and university systems are more than happy to help them get loans -- lots of loans. There are adults in America today who are old enough to retire and are still paying off college loans.

Why, in a country that continually complains about inequity, does this exist? Why does a university education cost so much? We are told that it's necessary to maintain a quality of instruction, adequate facilities, all the good things that contribute to success in the university system. My first question, of course, is "How many university professors get contracts for $70 million or more?"

How can a school justify spending money like that? What type of value system invests less -- much less -- in the education and training of its students than they do in trying to get the school into a game in January that gives them a chance to have bragging rights about a "national championship" for less than a year?

I don't fault the coach. I guess if someone offered me a job for $70 million and guaranteed me the money -- all of it -- even if they fired me, I would have problems turning the offer down. But it says a lot about priorities.

Our country, our culture, needs leaders. We need people who have been trained, who have worked hard to get an education, and are ready to use it to meet the challenges of our time. We need people who have learned from the best in productivity, leadership, and innovation. Somehow, schools that get a national championship is not the priority that will equip the next generation. Don't get me wrong. I love college football, and love Saturdays in the fall when I get to watch. I am in awe of some of those young athletes, both the ones who excel on the gridiron and in the classroom simultaneously, as well as the ones who realize that God has blessed them with phenomenal abilities and decide to give back to the community.

No, the villain for me is the class of people who would keep an enthusiastic student out of a classroom through a one-hundred-dollar misunderstanding, and at the same time adopt an "it's-only-money" attitude toward a multimillion-dollar contract that needs to be tweaked.

Can anyone honestly tell me there's nothing wrong with that set of priorities?