Blog Topics for Consideration

1. I am considering a topic called "The Cost of College Sports." College athletics are a business and athletes are paying the price: from injuries to lack of time to focus on studies. How do athletic programs affect college tuition rates for both athletes and non-athletes? What are coaches and top programs just exactly willing to sacrifice? 




2. The second topic I am considering for my final paper is an inside look at Greek Life. Do the benefits really outweigh the cost?

Comments

  1. Michael GoellerFebruary 10, 2020 at 11:47 AM

    Some suggestions related to Greek life:

    If you pursue the Greek Life topic, you might start by looking at the chapters from Paying for the Party related to "The Party Pathway" and sororities. The Rutgers libraries have an electronic copy of the entire book for you to look at:
    https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rutgers-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3301285

    A good place to get some sense of the variety of academic approaches to Greek life is the book The Influence of Fraternity and Sorority Involvement : A Critical Analysis of Research (1996-2013) by Biddix et al. which surveys a wide range of literature up to 2013 on the topic, in various categories. This is a useful guide to the literature that will give you a sense of different approaches to the topic. Biddix followed up with another survey titled "Moving Beyond Alcohol" in 2016 that offered an update.

    And I think there have been well over a dozen students over the years writing about Greek issues, most of whom belonged to fraternities or sororities themselves and therefore preferred to find a positive angle on the topic:
    http://fp148.blogspot.com/
    http://nitishmogilisetty.blogspot.com/
    http://arunsarma97.blogspot.com/
    http://kylekeogh.blogspot.com/

    And that is maybe a third of the ones on our blog list from previous years.

    Some took on the hazing issue (typically following a bad incident on campus), which is a complex topic for analysis (but not very positive):
    http://melissadottavio.blogspot.com/
    http://vishwa201college.blogspot.com/

    So there are a lot of angles to explore. Typically, students begin with the idea of defending sororities or fraternities from "the bad rap" they get in the press (as in The Dark Power of Fraternities from The Atlantic). But students quickly realize that is not a viable topic in itself, and so most find a topic about the positive value of Greek life in helping to build "soft skills," expand your social capital through networking, or help teach you self-efficacy and leadership. (You can find blogs on those topics in our blog list).

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  2. Michael GoellerFebruary 10, 2020 at 12:12 PM

    Either of these topics would work, and you might choose the one you feel most personally connected to, or most passionate about.

    There have been lots of projects on college sports, including on whether college athletes should be paid, the big business of college sports, college sports and branding, the corruption caused by college sports, academic cheating and athletes, athletes and rape culture, athletic entitlement and rape, non-scholarship sports, chess teams as sports teams, cheerleading, etc.

    It is useful to think of college sports as a potentially self-funding form of brand management, alumni networking, and enrollment marketing -- and an aspect of "college life" that is essential to the success of the party pathway (an argument first made in the book Beer and Circus). Of course, as a branding strategy, athletics can be a dangerous territory: there is not only the danger of having a losing team (e.g.: Rutgers), but the danger of having a sports scandal (Penn State, North Carolina, the list goes on and on). Interestingly, there is some evidence that sports scandals are not necessarily as negative as you'd expect, as they do lead to plenty of name recognition. Ultimately, though, sports teams are just a necessary part of the college experience for many students, and so it is impossible to have a large university without them.

    Here are just a few of the many blogs on athletic-related topics -- you can find many more in the blog list:

    http://jsalm.blogspot.com/
    http://researchinsomedisciplines.blogspot.com/
    http://jimmyriccardi7.blogspot.com/
    http://austintsmith.blogspot.com/
    http://entitlementadeadlysinforathletes.blogspot.com/
    http://athleticrevenue.blogspot.com/

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