<p>ljrfrm: I could not agree more.</p>
<p>You folks are ignoring the role that the Penn State culture played in allowing these children to be repeatedly raped. The PSU students and alums were more concerned with football than with reality. The PSU ethos has long been blind, unwavering support for the football program. Football is a bigger priority than academics and, aparently, morality.
Even the university president and the board or trustees were too attached to the money generated by football that they allowed child rape - on campus - in order to keep the money pouring in. </p>
<p>Joe Paterno and his cronies ran the school and the students and alums allowed it to happen. They ruled without limits and without criticism. The person that called it a cult was very accurate. Even after the exposure, students continued to rally around a coach who enabled a pedophile. There is still a statue standing of a man who knew his friend was raping children and didn’t bother to stop it. </p>
<p>The fact that those affiliated with PSU are still so concerned about the future of the football program shows that the cult is still intact. While anyone with any common sense would see that child rape dwarfs any concerns about football but the football program seems to be PSU people’s biggest concern. This, after seeing the damage that was caused by allowing the university to be taken ower by the football program. </p>
<p>At most legitimate colleges and universities, academics are the central focus. Sports are an entertaining diversion. At PSU it is football first and some classes in between. Penn State is a mess. It is a place for drunken jocks to party for 4 years. </p>
<p>Football needs to be scrapped at Penn State. Let the school set aside its greed and change the atmosphere from a drunken pep rally to a place of higher learning. It is time for alums and students to demand that the program be ended and the school be sanitized from it’s affiliation with the septic football program. Until PSU drops football I will always view the cult as complicit in child rape.</p>
<p>prej·u·dice
[prej-uh-dis] Show IPA noun, verb, prej·u·diced, prej·u·dic·ing.
noun
1.
an unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand or without knowledge, thought, or reason.
2.
any preconceived opinion or feeling, either favorable or unfavorable.
3.
unreasonable feelings, opinions, or attitudes, especially of a hostile nature, regarding a racial, religious, or national group.
4.
such attitudes considered collectively: The war against prejudice is never-ending.
5.
damage or injury; detriment: a law that operated to the prejudice of the majority.</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Best post ever.</p>
<p>Oh, but wait…he forgot to mention they are going to shut down the school and revoke diplomas from 600,000 alumni…</p>
<p>Actually, now that I think about it, that would never actually happen.</p>
<p>MrBladder, do yourself a favor, and stop riding the coattails of other posts…</p>
<p>Quote: It is a place for drunken jocks to party for 4 years. </p>
<p>Mr. RisingChemist, I never drunk in college and I’m no where near being a jock so I find this very offensive. At Penn State its football first and classes second? Yea that’s why we are ranked 45th in the nation and 13th among public schools. PSU students were more concerned about football then reality? The students nor the players had no idea what was going on.</p>
<p>Mr. Chemist, it is obvious you know nothing about Penn State except the crap you read on the internet.</p>
<p>Penn State is currently #45 in USNWR rankings. Ohio State is #55 and Pitt is #58. My hypothesis is that Penn State will fall approximately 10 spots in the rankings over a period of several years, not 1 or 2 years. Agreed that Penn State will be the same academically and still well-regarded by employers. But it will not be held in the same high regard publicly as now, and will lose ground to Wisconsin and Michigan.</p>
<p>It could be worse if the trustees don’t get a clue. They seem gun-shy over the PSU community and Paterno family responses to Paterno’s firing. However, to the rest of the public, that prompt firing might be the only thing they have done right.</p>
<p>Incorrect, I have numerous friends that attended and I have been to Penn State several times. I have friends with season tickets. </p>
<p>Have you been to Beaver stadium? It holds 100,000 mindless drunks and another 200,000 gather outside. The whole week. Centers around the game. It is not an intellectual community.</p>
<p>
Unlike Michigan? Or Ohio State? Or Notre Dame? This is not the only big stadium, and the experience is not that different than other schools.</p>
<p>
You are dreaming, and insulting everyone who has ever received a Penn State degree. Yes, there are some drunken idiots, just like at every university, but they do not define the school. </p>
<p>Or maybe you are right - I mean, I personally know a few professors, an Air Force test pilot, a Rhodes scholar, and others who have PSU undergrad degrees but clearly were not intellectuals and got to those places only by drinking and watching football with the right people. One of the new trustees (elected post-scandal) is a PSU alum who commanded SEAL team 2. Definitely a shady character.</p>
<p>Where you are wrong is that Penn State is absolutely defined by football.</p>
<p>And don’t group Notre Dame with PSU or OSU. Notre Dame is an elite academic university with 6500 undergrads. Football is a cash cow there but the university apparently has control of athletics. Attend a game in South Bend and you will see the difference. </p>
<p>OSU runs a dirty program too and has been sanctioned numerous times. I don’t know enough about Michigan to comment there.</p>
<p>Quote: Notre Dame is an elite academic university </p>
<p>So is Penn State. And I’ve been to Notre Dame football games it’s still a riot especially when their team loses. </p>
<p>Quote: Penn State is absolutely defined by football.</p>
<p>Though football is big at Penn State, most students including myself attended for the elite academics and job offers the school could bring us. I don’t think you have the slightest clue about what you’re talking about.</p>
<p>Risisingchemist,</p>
<p>You do know that Notre Dame football has been sanctioned the same number of times as OSU and UM in the past twenty five years: once. Kim Dunbar ring a bell?</p>
<p>Notre Dame football was put on probation for two years for a major violation for issues of payments by a booster and academic fraud during the late Holtz/Bob Davie regimes.</p>
<p>I think whydoicare probably has it about right in terms of the rankings: “Penn State is currently #45 in USNWR rankings. Ohio State is #55 and Pitt is #58. My hypothesis is that Penn State will fall approximately 10 spots in the rankings over a period of several years, not 1 or 2 years. Agreed that Penn State will be the same academically and still well-regarded by employers. But it will not be held in the same high regard publicly as now, and will lose ground to Wisconsin and Michigan.” My guess is that Penn State will drop on the reputation score, which is 22.5% of the USNWR ranking, and selectivity, which is 15%. I doubt that it will get any less selective for in state kids, but I would guess that it will for OOS. These numbers are very subjective–what do some of the people giving the reputation scores really know about the schools they are ranking, and who the heck knows what drives an 18 year old to pick one school over another–and I think very subject to being influenced by a scandal like this. Small changes in these numbers make a big difference in the rankings, so I would not be surpirsed to see PSU drop 15 or 20 spots. And no, I don’t think it’s fair, in the sense that a rankings drop would not be connected to any drop in the quality of the education received, or the attractiveness of grads to employers, etc. But that is a different argument, about the validity of the USNWR rankings as a measure of the quality of a school.</p>
<p>I think Penn State will get significantly easier to get into for OOS for two reasons. Remember, the Governor has gutted Penn State’s state appropriations to the tune of 50% over two years, and he still has two more years to go after the rest. While these dollars may represent a small percentage of Penn State’s annual operating budget, they still amount to tens of millions (over a hundred million?) dollars ripped from the budget.</p>
<p>Penn State will increasingly be looking to recruiting more OOS students (currently the highest OOS tuition of any public university in the country) for budgetary reasons. At the same time, many OOS students (particularly high achievers with multiple options) will be scratching Penn State off their lists. Penn State is going to be attempting to recruit a larger number of oos students from a lower quality pool of applicants. Regardless of whether the in-state pool stays the same or even increases, that will drag overall numbers down significantly.</p>
<p>This is my hypothesis and I think the entering freshman class of 2014 will probably bear it out as valid.</p>
<p><<remember, the=“” governor=“” has=“” gutted=“” penn=“” state’s=“” state=“” appropriations=“” to=“” tune=“” of=“” 50%=“” over=“” two=“” years,=“” and=“” he=“” still=“” more=“” years=“” go=“” after=“” rest.=“”>></remember,></p>
<p>I believe the number is 30%; there were no cuts to the budget this year.
[Gov</a>. Corbett signs budget, Penn State avoids cuts - The Daily Collegian Online](<a href=“http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2012/07/02/psu_avoids_cuts_in_corbett_approved_budget.aspx]Gov”>http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2012/07/02/psu_avoids_cuts_in_corbett_approved_budget.aspx)</p>
<p>There will undoubtedly be some students who choose to go elsewhere, but I doubt it will be enough to be statistically significant. Penn State will remain popular with students from the neighboring and heavily populated states of New York and New Jersey, which lack comparable flagship universities and, while the state schools in those states offer many excellent programs, overall they do not offer the breadth and quality of Penn State’s programs. For the many students who want to matriculate to a large university within a few hours of home, the options are limited. There are also many alums in those states who won’t hesitate to send their kids to PSU.</p>
<p>"[W]hich lack comparable flagship universities . . . ." Really hard to support this statement. Whether it’s Rutgers, U of Maryland, SUNY Binghamton, UConn, or PSU, for undergraduate education there really is very little differentiation based on academics–faculty went to the same schools; same textbooks; same courses offered; same class size. There is an argument that what colleges and universities really have to sell, i.e., where there is diffeentiation, is the other students, and based on, for example, SAT scores, students at PSU or not better than any of the above schools. U of MD SAT middle 50% of SAT scores 50 points higher than Penn State, UConn has higher SAT scores than Penn State, SUNY Binghamton has higher SAT scores than Penn State. Like it or not, a good part of PSU’s differentiation to out of staters has been the football program and the picture of PSU as a sort of Camelot. I am from Connecticut, and no one here would say that the success of the basketball teams has not played a great role in raising UConn’s reputation. If the Camelot image at PSU has been blown up (for all but the most dedicated, it has), and PSU’s ranking drops below that of say UofMd and UConn, which are both ranked in the 50s, not far behind PSU (again, the ranking may be dropping because people who know almost nothing about the school are giving it lower reputation scores, which I agree is ridiculous), it starts to become pretty hard for OOS parent to justify spending twice as much money to send Johnny or Suzy to PSU. I have no doubt that PSU will have no trouble at all filling the 30% OOS enrollment, but I do think the caliber of those kids will go down.</p>
<p>I referred only to NY and NJ, where the majority of the OOS students are from. I did not say that the SUNYs were not fine schools, only that one is not considered the flagship school of the system, along the lines of what many other states have. It would be hard to argue that SUNY Binghamton offers the same experience as a school four times the size. And I think few would consider Rutgers a true peer institution of Penn State’s. (It seems unlikely PSU will drop near Rutger’s ranking at #68.)</p>
<p>Penn State. </p>
<p>As Draco Malfoy once said, “what a pathetic excuse for a school.”</p>