Will Generate a Debate Poll

[RUChet]

If only 1 of these happens which would you wish for…

 

[DJ Spanky]

That one's easy.

 

[Section124]

I didn't realize we had so many Rutgers 1000 member on this board.

 

[RUChet]

So far I’m shocked at the vote. I’ll tell you how I voted. I want to win and yes I’ll trade winning for lower average student SAT scores!

 

[Bueller]

Slash academic depts and budgets (PSU just did).
Most colleges are overrated and degrees are losing their juice. Lots of junk degrees and redundancy

Need something like the land grant program in 1800s that filled a need for ag and industry people. Now colleges are closing and there is a need to teach skills which are dwindling when you chase males out of colleges and massively overcharge students.

I'm not impressed with medical schools either since we know people have been poisoned with industries that pay for any study they need. For decades they told people with diabetes to focus on grains and cut down on meat. Truck loads of amputations, blindness, kidney disease etc. Domestic Surgeons are great mechanics though.

Back when Harvard was still good they threw shade at the pyramid but that was rare 20 years ago.

"In the wild, animals instinctively find and consume the foods best adapted to their bodies. Not so for humans. Agribusinesses, fast-food chains, and calorie merchants assail the consumer with edible products designed to maximize revenue, not health. The result is a plague of nutrition-related illness: obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer. And contradictory nutritional guidance from popular books and scientific researchers only intensifies our confusion about what to eat."

Demolish the Food Pyramid​

Demolish the Food Pyramid | Harvard Magazine

In the wild, animals instinctively find and consume the foods best adapted to their bodies. Not so for humans. Agribusinesses, fast-food chains...

www.harvardmagazine.com

More sports.

 

[Bueller]

Penn State looks to cut 47 undergraduate degrees​

The public institution is moving to eliminate programs with low enrollment and fading student demand after a multiyear review of its offerings.

Penn State looks to cut 47 undergraduate degrees

The public institution is moving to eliminate programs with low enrollment and fading student demand after a multiyear review of its offerings.

www.highereddive.com

 

[RUChet]

Slash academic depts and budgets (PSU just did).
Most colleges are overrated and degrees are losing their juice. Lots of junk degrees and redundancy

Need something like the land grant program in 1800s that filled a need for ag and industry people. Now colleges are closing and there is a need to teach skills which are dwindling when you chase males out of colleges and massively overcharge students.

I'm not impressed with medical schools either since we know people have been poisoned with industries that pay for any study they need. For decades they told people with diabetes to focus on grains and cut down on meat. Truck loads of amputations, blindness, kidney disease etc. Domestic Surgeons are great mechanics though.

Back when Harvard was still good they threw shade at the pyramid but that was rare 20 years ago.

"In the wild, animals instinctively find and consume the foods best adapted to their bodies. Not so for humans. Agribusinesses, fast-food chains, and calorie merchants assail the consumer with edible products designed to maximize revenue, not health. The result is a plague of nutrition-related illness: obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer. And contradictory nutritional guidance from popular books and scientific researchers only intensifies our confusion about what to eat."

Demolish the Food Pyramid​

Demolish the Food Pyramid | Harvard Magazine

In the wild, animals instinctively find and consume the foods best adapted to their bodies. Not so for humans. Agribusinesses, fast-food chains...

www.harvardmagazine.com

More sports.

Not only are degrees overrated but the school it’s from is as well

I use like 2% of what I learned in school

but my son is an EE and he is learning why things work they way they do where work teaches you the what and how and he does think knowing the why is helpful but that’s his major

my degree is virtually useless

 

[MADHAT1]

So far I’m shocked at the vote. I’ll tell you how I voted. I want to win and yes I’ll trade winning for lower average student SAT scores!

Not me, I want Rutgers Football Players to get perfect grades and I hope Schiano feels the same and proves it by meeting all the players Professors on the sly , demanding they give his players the top grades , even if they deserved
frowny faces on their test papers

 

[RUChet]

Not me, I want Rutgers Football Players to get perfect grades and I hope Schiano feels the same and proves it by meeting all the players Professors on the sly , demanding they give his players the top grades , even if they deserved
frowny faces on their test papers
View attachment 1485161

Say hello Kyle Flood

 

[mdk02]

Not me, I want Rutgers Football Players to get perfect grades and I hope Schiano feels the same and proves it by meeting all the players Professors on the sly , demanding they give his players the top grades , even if they deserved
frowny faces on their test papers
View attachment 1485161

Mike McMahon said it about 27-28 years ago:

"They expect us to be Harvard Monday through Friday and Ohio St. on Saturday."

 

[koleszar]

I don't pay to watch a Physics or English class. Just like a rising tide, successful athletics programs and the PR that comes with that does the same thing.

 

[RUTGERS95]

Mike McMahon said it about 27-28 years ago:

"They expect us to be Harvard Monday through Friday and Ohio St. on Saturday."

many people really don't understand how the school was toward student athletes.

we can improve on both massively and it's up to Tate to get it done

 

[Doctor Worm]

I don't pay to watch a Physics or English class. Just like a rising tide, successful athletics programs and the PR that comes with that does the same thing.

But that's not what this poll is asking.

You are correct that for decades, the primary rationale for increased athletic emphasis is that it benefited the university as a whole. Athletics was presented as a means to an end. We can and should enjoy excellence in both.

The poll challenges that assumption. This poll posits that we cannot have excellence in both. We can only have one. So pick one.

I would have thought that this poll would have run about 75-25 in favor of academics, with the 25 composed primarily of non-alums like myself. (I voted for academics.) TBH I am gobsmacked that an alum would choose athletics over academics.

I guess the spirit of Cardale Jones is alive and well.

 

[RUChet]

Mike McMahon said it about 27-28 years ago:

"They expect us to be Harvard Monday through Friday and Ohio St. on Saturday."

Well Ohio state is Ohio state 7 days a week. So is Michigan. Both very good institutions

 

[RUChet]

But that's not what this poll is asking.

You are correct that for decades, the primary rationale for increased athletic emphasis is that it benefited the university as a whole. Athletics was presented as a means to an end. We can and should enjoy excellence in both.

The poll challenges that assumption. This poll posits that we cannot have excellence in both. We can only have one. So pick one.

I would have thought that this poll would have run about 75-25 in favor of academics, with the 25 composed primarily of non-alums like myself. (I voted for academics.) TBH I am gobsmacked that an alum would choose athletics over academics.

I guess the spirit of Cardale Jones is alive and well.

I am the OP and I am not positing anything. I’m trying to gauge what people care more about.

Some institutions can be great at both: ND, Mich, OSU, USC, etc

I graduated a log time ago and sorry but I don’t care if we climb or slip in the academic rankings. I just don’t.

I want to win meaningful game dad I’ve been waiting 50+ years and expect the 2006 streak and the 1976 final four, it’s been an awful awful lot of losing

 

[Knight Shift]

I voted for academics. Three in our family have had highly successful careers as Rutgers computer science and engineering graduates. I would like Rutgers to do well in athletics, and by doing well, respectable is fine with me. 7-5 to 9-3 seasons in football, with an occasional 10 win season, and making the tourney in men's and women's hoops every couple or few years. Just don't see Rutgers rising to the level of Ohio State, Michigan, etc in athletics. It's not that important to us, which is why we have given far more to academics than athletics.

 

[RUChet]

I voted for academics. Three in our family have had highly successful careers as Rutgers computer science and engineering graduates. I would like Rutgers to do well in athletics, and by doing well, respectable is fine with me. 7-5 to 9-3 seasons in football, with an occasional 10 win season, and making the tourney in men's and women's hoops every couple or few years. Just don't see Rutgers rising to the level of Ohio State, Michigan, etc in athletics. It's not that important to us, which is why we have given far more to academics than athletics.

7-5 to 9-3 consistently and occasionally is a huge step up from who we’ve been for the last 50 years save a short stretch under GS1.0.

I just don’t see it happening in the B1G. Too much competition.

I think we can get to 6-7 wins consistently with a better coach as that only requires 3-4 conf wins if we can sweep out of conference.

But once we get the better coach and has several good seasons in a row, I fear we lose him to a bigger program and we go back to where we are now.

 

[Bueller]

Not only are degrees overrated but the school it’s from is as well

I use like 2% of what I learned in school

but my son is an EE and he is learning why things work they way they do where work teaches you the what and how and he does think knowing the why is helpful but that’s his major

my degree is virtually useless

US Grant was in San Fran area where gold rush started. He wrote in his autobiography that he was sad watching a lot of northeastern college guys coming to CA and suffering because they no skills. Back in the day colleges were often geared for upper crust who saw education as a kind of veneer of civilization (classics, languages, literature and such) with elements of social status. Some of that survives and its not all bad but its wise to have skills. Ottoman rulers has to have a skill. Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent was was a silversmith.

Plus doing some kind if physical labor or skill gets people out of their heads. Cramming people's head with abstractions and factoid salads without any related personal discover makes people intellectually imbalanced and it does damage. Schopenhauer described all this in his contrast between artificial and natural mind. People who live in their heads are among most open to suggestion. These days a lot of young people have been groomed to think in slogans


Schopenhauer

The Natural Mind

• Grounded in Experience: The natural mind builds general concepts and ideas after direct personal observation and first-hand interaction with the world.
• Authentic Wisdom: Knowledge acquired through one's own independent thinking and perception belongs to the person organically, much like a natural limb.
• Common Sense: It fosters genuine discernment, critical judgment, and sound common sense—traits Schopenhauer often found more reliable in uneducated observers than in academic pedants.

The Artificial Mind (Artificial Education / Borrowed Intellect)

• Inverted Order: Artificial education crams the mind with "ready-made" general ideas, theories, and other people's thoughts before real experience happens.
• Superficial and Stiff: Schopenhauer famously compared truth that is merely memorized or spoon-fed to an "artificial limb, a false tooth, a wax nose"—it sits awkwardly upon the person and lacks vital force.
• Cognitive Disconnect: It breeds "nervous anxiety" and "mistaken confidence," trapping individuals in neat, rigid schematics of how things should be rather than seeing reality as it actually is.
• Driven by the Will: In modern extensions of his philosophy, machine or artificial intelligence represents a pure, tireless apparatus of calculation governed blindly by logic or design, detached from the suffering, intuitive, and desire-driven core of human Will.

 

[Section124]

When was the last time you heard a player was academically ineligible. Now they just enter the portal.

I want to win. Being the best academically is so subjective anyway. Nothing wrong with silver there.

 

[AnonAmoose26]

I guess the spirit of Cardale Jones is alive and well.

Cardale Jones and UNC won. Pay attention, Doc. Were any football or basketball players deemed academically ineligible in all of Division 1 last year?

 

[RUChet]

Votes now closer to what I expected as OP which was around 2/3rds would rather win then rise up the academic rankings.

 

[Shelby65]

There’s ebb and flow with athletics. Not long ago Wisconsin had both going for it. Vanderbilt caught lightning in a bottle with Pavia. For most schools, top athletics are hard to sustain. So, why try ? Why break the bank for temporary success ?

Why keep $ rebuilding a house in a flood zone? To enjoy 3 dry months ?

Academics is sustainable. Development lasts. And it’s what higher education is supposed to be about.

Shelby votes academics.

 

[e5fdny]

7-5 to 9-3 consistently and occasionally is a huge step up from who we’ve been for the last 50 years save a short stretch under GS1.0.

I just don’t see it happening in the B1G. Too much competition.

I think we can get to 6-7 wins consistently with a better coach as that only requires 3-4 conf wins if we can sweep out of conference.

* But once we get the better coach and has several good seasons in a row, I fear we lose him to a bigger program and we go back to where we are now.

The bolded has already happened.

We need the next guy to win one extra regular season game to get to 8-4. Just one. Which has not happened yet.

Getting there does a few things:

- most wins in a regular season since joining the B1G
- over .500 conference record, also a first
- probably results in a better bowl, location and opponent

All of those above are marketable accomplishments you can use to sell the program to future recruits, NIL people and regular fans.

* Who cares. Because if those things happen it shows the myth isn’t true…only one person could have success here.

And in theory, should make it an easier sell when hiring the next guy.

 

[LotusAggressor_rivals]

Mike McMahon said it about 27-28 years ago:

"They expect us to be Harvard Monday through Friday and Ohio St. on Saturday."

People said this when I was at RU in the mid '80s. It was Nebraska then.

 

[RUChet]

There’s ebb and flow with athletics. Not long ago Wisconsin had both going for it. Vanderbilt caught lightning in a bottle with Pavia. For most schools, top athletics are hard to sustain. So, why try ? Why break the bank for temporary success ?

Why keep $ rebuilding a house in a flood zone? To enjoy 3 dry months ?

Academics is sustainable. Development lasts. And it’s what higher education is supposed to be about.

Shelby votes academics.

And you personally care how good Rutgers academics are? I don’t. I mean I’d prefer we be very good but if we slip it doesn’t affect me at all. I graduated a long time ago.

but my fandom , even if depressing, is real and I want to win! Tired of losing is almost all sports most seasons

Vandy is good in some sports like baseball and has def has more success than RU overall across their AD but Vandy is an elite academic school like NW. they are clearly way above RU- the Ivy of the south basically

Wisky too has had much much more success than RU and is arguably a bit above us academcially. basketball has been in the NCAA’s most years, football has been to way bigger bowl games and ranked several years, wrestling is better so they actually are a pretty good model of success on both fronts

 

[Shelby65]

And you personally care how good Rutgers academics are? I don’t. I mean I’d prefer we be very good but if we slip it doesn’t affect me at all. I graduated a long time ago.

but my fandom , even if depressing, is real and I want to win! Tired of losing is almost all sports most seasons

Vandy is good in some sports like baseball and has def has more success than RU overall across their AD but Vandy is an elite academic school like NW. they are clearly way above RU- the Ivy of the south basically

Wisky too has had much much more success than RU and is arguably a bit above us academcially. basketball has been in the NCAA’s most years, football has been to way bigger bowl games and ranked several years, wrestling is better so they actually are a pretty good model of success on both fronts

Why would it depress you ? You have nothing to do with the failures. By the same token, successful athletics shouldn’t be a source of pride. Have pride in your own successes, your kids’, etc. Have pride in what matters personally.

I want Rutgers to win too, but not at the expense of becoming LSU North, a #200 academics ranking and players on the police blotter.

Rutgers is in the AAU, a group of the most prestigious schools. Athletics is irrelevant to that status. Being a grad of RU should matter more to you than the football W-L record. With all due respect to you, and of course not knowing you, I think people who overvalue the importance of sports should look in the mirror and ‘get a life’. Football is entertainment. Education is far more personal and valuable.

Look at what’s on the shelf at Walmarts across America. How many UMichigan Law School, LSU Med School shirts are for sale ? How about none. Sports matter too much. Be better.