Column: Organs, fish, and why his theory is a miss
April 15, 2008
“OK, and we’ll need a pint of blood and a piece of your kidney.”
That’s what the federal government should say when you are entering college and accepting all your student loans. Maybe the seriousness would sink in a little more.
As most soon-to-be graduates must do, I recently completed the required “debt counseling” online. I already had my repayment plan calculated to the penny, so this hour of boredom didn’t take me for a loop.
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OK, maybe it threw a slight curveball my way.
During the process, you get to pick a repayment option. To my surprise, it offered an ever-so lucrative option of paying your loans back over a 25-year period.
That kind of bugged me. Sure, stretching your repayment period lightens your monthly load tremendously. However, this is undoubtedly a financial trap I hope none of you fall into.
For math’s sake, let’s say you have $20,000 in loans by the time you graduate, which is about the national average. Chances are this is a Stafford loan, which (for most of us) is set at 6.8 percent.
Now, let’s go ahead and check that 25-year option. Hey, I want smaller monthly payments.
And the total is … $21,646.49 – in interest that is.
So, you’d pay a total of $41,646.49 on a $20,000 debt if you decide to check this last box.
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If you listen to only one thing I say all semester, listen to me on this.
Does this smell fishy to you, too?
First of all, hats off to SIU President Glenn Poshard for getting a chancellor in place. On Friday, he announced Sam Goldman as the new interim chancellor.
Goldman was on the Board of Trustees and is a retired SIUC professor.
At first, I was just relieved the post finally got filled; it has been almost a month since Poshard put then-chancellor Fernando Trevi’ntilde;o on leave.
Then, after a couple seconds of thought, I smelled something stinky.
Quick review: Poshard had said people started complaining about Trevi’ntilde;o in August, before Poshard himself ran into some trouble. Shortly thereafter, plagiarism charges against Poshard surfaced.
So, Poshard knows about Trevi’ntilde;o troubles.
Plagiarism charges surface against Poshard.
BOT lets Poshard off without slapping his wrist.
Poshard appoints BOT member as chancellor.
OK, so maybe I’m jumping to conclusions. But Goldman also goes from technically making nothing as a trustee to a salary that will likely be at least $250,000 a year, just after he and other BOT members gave Poshard a gracious pass.
I have no problem with Goldman being chancellor. He’s a longtime Carbondale guy and a staple at major university events. Plus, we didn’t spend $100,000 on an incompetent search firm.
The timing just seems a little suspicious, no?
Here’s what’s really going on
Last week, I called out Will Reilly’s dissertation that said paying so much for athletics wasn’t worth it if we don’t win a bunch of national championships.
Reilly responded in a letter, saying enrollment increasing doesn’t justify the spending.
I didn’t want to be too blunt about how off base he was, but I’ll give you (and any anti-athletics) a little dose of reality.
Yeah, athletics rarely pay for themselves. That’s no secret. Most programs spend more than they make. These are all givens across America.
But winning national championships isn’t the only thing that makes the million-dollar spending worthwhile.
A couple things you have to take into consideration:
A men’s basketball team nets about $1.2 million for its conference for every NCAA Tournament game it appears in. So, for example, each Missouri Valley Conference team received about $1 million in 2006 after two MVC squads made it to the Sweet 16.
Also, there’s this thing called TV.
When SIUC plays on the big stage, that’s big advertising. When SIU was featured on ESPN’s College Gameday (the first ever “mid-major” school, literally) millions of viewers saw SIU front and center. You can’t put a price tag on that, or any nationally televised game (such as the 2006 MVC championship) in which SIUC is awarded a handful of commercial spots. That can quickly add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Simply put, the SIU men’s basketball team is the single largest marketing tool the university has ever had. Without big-time athletics, where would our university’s donors gather each year? Athletic events are where the university’s money is milked.
Without sports, any university would sink.
Reilly also essentially called some 1,200 SIU student-athletes dumb jocks, saying they, “often underperform academically.”
Don’t tell that to Jamaal Tatum, who was an academic All-American; or Bryan Mullins, who holds a 4.0 in finance; or the softball team, which had the second highest team GPA in the country (yes, the country); or the entire student-athlete population, which holds an overall higher GPA (2.98) than the regular student body (2.87).
Another ill-informed swing, another miss.
Wilson is a senior studying journalism.
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