RENT SEEKING? An earlier post expressed skepticism about pinning your hopes of academic visibility on your athletic program, this time at [Southwest] Missouri State and Marquette. The University Diaries post that got me started includes a rather provocative comment.

Missouri State University was, until last year, Southwest Missouri State University at Springfield. Its name-change was part of a plan--hatched in close conjunction with Missouri's Republic [c.q.]political leadership, most of which is from Springfield--to "upgrade" the institution, start doctoral and professional programs, and seize tens of millions in state funds from the state's actual land grant institution, the University of Missouri. If Missouri State wants to do all this, and replace the University of MIssouri [c.q.] as the leading public institution of higher education in the state (conveniently located in a Republican stronghold, rather than the liberal college town of Columbia, where the University of Missouri is) it will need a Division I-A football team.

Public choice at work?

I'm not able to comment on that allegation. The public record suggests [Southwest] Missouri State's administration is embarking on the course Murray Sperber characterizes as "Upwardly Mobile." Here is the university's own explanation.

Today, the institution is a multipurpose, metropolitan university providing diverse instructional, research, and service programs. On August 28, 2005, the institution's name changed to Missouri State University.

The history is a bit eerie. We have a state teachers' college that evolves into a compass-point state college and then into a compass-point state university and, on its centennial, into Missouri State. At the 1995 centennial of Northern Illinois University, some senior administrators pushed to rename our former state teachers' college the University of Northern Illinois, as if transposing a few words takes away the stigma of the compass point. So far, that hasn't happened. Judge us by what we do, not by what we are allowed to call ourselves.

[Southwest] Missouri State's athletic department has made the tough decision to free up additional resources (to strengthen its football program?)

The current intercollegiate athletics budget is approximately $11.1 million, with about $5.1 million coming as the transfer from the university’s general fund. Included in the $11.1 total is approximately $3.9 million in athletic scholarships. Nietzel says the Missouri State athletics program should not be expected to be totally self-sufficient, but he also says it needs to come closer than it is now.

Again, some eerie similarities. (I'll leave aside the problems of self-sufficiency in a multiproduct enterprise. Too much heavy economics for a Friday afternoon.) Anybody remember Cut Five, Cap Two, the Wisconsin dodge to free up more resources and get some Rose Bowl wins for the Badgers?

Unfortunately, [Southwest] Missouri's up-and-coming Division I football team, should that be part of the master plan, is likely to be a desirable "bought win" for Kansas or Northern Illinois or Penn State (they could take over for Rutgers!) Something similar appears to trouble the football staff at St. Cloud State, where the administration would like to move to Division I in football and private communications inform me the coaches are less than pleased with the possibility. Despite Northern Illinois's recent successes on the field, I am still troubled by the away games at big stadiums (season openers at Ohio State and Tennessee the next two seasons) motivated in part by the requirement for average home and away attendance to meet Division I criteria. That the season is likely to be expanded to twelve games for everybody simply enhances the chances of young men being injured with little or no compensation for it. And the evidence of football programs building enrollment or academic reputation is generally anecdotal.

Then comes the other part of Upwardly Mobile, adding new graduate programs (this at a time when in many fields there are more novices than there are convents to house them) and converting Compass Point State into the equivalent of a land grant college. Consider economics. (You really want the administration to see that you could hold a faculty meeting on a landing?) Currently, [Southwest] Missouri State offer baccalaureate degrees in economics, and the college of business no doubt requires its students to be serviced. Now you want to throw in a masters' program? A Ph.D.? I did a quick scan of the faculty web pages. I found exactly one that provided a list of refereed publications. I found no evidence of any faculty publication in the discipline's eight leading journals. That poses a number of problems for the current economics faculty, none good. First, to add a Ph.D. the search committee might have to recruit people with research talents beyond their own. Challenging, not impossible. Then the existing committee of tenured faculty must consider standards for tenuring those new hires. Do they reject those who have not managed to publish any of their research in those leading journals, or do they find reason to reject those who have?