Philadelphia Inquirer – September 5, 2012
Jerry Sandusky’s arrest and the subsequent firing of coach Joe Paterno and university president Graham B. Spanier last fall must have precipitated some hurried recalculations in the Penn State admissions office.
Most colleges and universities accept more students than they have room for based on educated guesses about the share of those admitted that will actually enroll. Ideally, they end up with the number of students they budgeted for. Too few students, and the college runs at a deficit; too many, and classrooms and dorms overflow.
Generally, the previous year’s figures are the best guide to the next cycle. But in the wake of the Sandusky scandal, who knew what would happen at Penn State?
Some sighs of relief undoubtedly accompanied the freshmen who just moved in: Their number exceeded the enrollment goal for the main campus by a manageable amount. The fallout from the Sandusky case has not seriously hurt Penn State’s admissions.
To the extent that the 11th graders I counseled last spring were aware of what happened at Penn State, they didn’t seem to make a connection between those events and their application plans. I spoke with a number of them specifically about applying to Penn State for the fall of 2013, and not one mentioned the university’s troubles.
The economy is still weak, and the university still offers well-respected programs at half the cost of the most expensive private institutions. This fall, its applications may well run ahead of last year’s numbers. The few high school seniors and parents who decide to scratch the university off their lists will be more than made up for by others who see opportunities in the aftermath of the scandal.
For the next few years, prospective Penn State students and their parents will expect more accountability and more oversight from a chastened administration. They will assume, rightly, that the university will try harder than ever to be responsive to its constituents. And they will hope that in the post-Sandusky era, Penn State might be an even better school than it was.
In the 1980s, revelations of payments to football players led the NCAA to levy the so-called death penalty against Southern Methodist University, suspending its football program. That and other sanctions prompted SMU’s trustees to agree to sweeping changes in the university’s bylaws, including a significant reduction in the number of board members, and to hire a new president widely credited with important institutional reforms.
Penn State will continue to face legal challenges and scrutiny from accrediting agencies and other groups. But it avoided a suspension of its football program, and it continues to fill seats with highly qualified students. What remains to be seen is whether the university’s board chooses to take advantage of the crisis and institute real change, or whether, after the lawsuits are settled, it will be business as usual.
I am really pleased that Penn State applications have not been downgraded by the Sandusky scandal. I was concerned that parents would be hesitant to send their children to a University that had been sanctioned and fined to the extent that Penn State has experienced. In my view it was wrong to punish people who had absolutely nothing to do with the crimes of Sandusky and the few people who covered them up.
In my view Penn State has been a good University to go to for young people who want to learn about the world as well as about their own special interests. If the University reponds by becoming even better, then an asset has been created by what would have been a liability.
Sincerely,
R.M.
Penn State Class of 1942.
I think applications will go up and you’re right the scandal did not directly involve any students or any of the university’s many excellent academic programs.
The question of sanctions is tricky. The knowledge that the institution as a whole can be punished as a result of the actions of a few is supposed to encourage good oversight.
Your piece in yesterday morning’s Philadelphia Inquirer (PSU Figures Defy Gravity) left me scratching my head over your premise: That as a result of the Sandusky affair Penn State ought to be less attractive to prospective students, like those high schoolers you advise, and therefore its entering classes ought to be smaller than they are. On the other hand you seem to be wondering why your premise does not appear to hold up. May I suggest a reason?
The “Sandusky Problem” was truly horrible. But at the same time it was also simple: One of the football coaches was a pedophile and under the noses of his unseeing colleagues was harming children he brought to the campus. His superiors in the athletic department and administration were a bunch of confused schlubs trying to figure out what was really going on and what they could do about it. Ironically one of them—I hardly need mention his name—was himself a scholar of the classics. Like some heroes of Greek mythology in the end he failed a test the gods capriciously set for him that was wholly unrelated to the reasons he was a hero in the first place and for which he had neither tools nor training. Penn State then hired a prosecutor to figure out what went wrong and using a prosecutor’s alchemy he delivered a brief that changed one evil man’s crimes into the University’s. In hindsight it’s easy to see what these schlubs should have done: They should have contacted law enforcement and, like a certain Roman governor, washed their hands of the matter.
The problem with your premise is that the terrible stuff Sandusky was doing did not involve any of the reasons why Penn State is a great university. Although the Freeh report damned the school’s administration for its clumsy handling of the problem, nothing in it indicted a single one of PSU’s many academic programs. I can discern no way in which I was harmed or threatened as a major in German Literature back in the early 1970s after I left the Army. Neither can I divine any way in which the thousands of students who passed through the University since then were harmed. Has Sandusky brought shame to Penn State? Of course. But terrible as it was the problem had nothing to do with Penn State students and their education.
That’s where I think your premise fails. It will take a long time for all the dust to settle. And probably a lot of money for lawsuits. But nothing in that scandal should give any student pause to consider enrolling at Penn State.
With one possible exception: Football fans. To be sure, those who would choose Penn State solely because of its impressive football teams will have good grounds to reconsider in light of the NCAA sanctions. I foresee some empty seats in Beaver stadium. The Nittany Lion football program seems destined to spend the next decade or so wandering in an athletic desert.
But for those of us who see universities more as centers of learning and intellect than of football or basketball glory there is a bit of good news in Penn State’s defiance of “gravity.” Based on the admissions figures you describe it seems students have no trouble separating the wheat from the chaff. They seem to realize as I do that Happy Valley remains a great place to get a fine education. Even if I think I can spot a tear in the Nittany Lion’s eye.
In general, I agree with you. My apologies for not making that clear.
I did not intend to suggest at all that Sandusky scandal should have made Penn State less attractive to applicants, though I strongly suspect that the people in the Penn State admissions office were not sure, in the immediate aftermath of Sandusky’s arrest and various firings, whether admissions would be hurt. My point was that, if anything, events of this sort can strengthen applicant pools because students and parents assume that administrators will be paying more attention.
Interestingly, the authors of editorials also have nothing to say about the headlines attached to them, so the “defying gravity” line was not mine.
First thing, we get rid of the editors! I should have sensed that your meaning got a bit turned around on its way into print!