Is attending an American university worth $44,000 a year? Leaving aside all those novels by Herman Hesse (where is Siddhartha now that we need him?) that you may read during your undergraduate years, let’s look at a few numbers. The average college semester is 15 weeks, give or take the odd road trip to Florida or a winter carnival. In other words, a week of college costs $1,466 or $209.52 per day, including Sundays, when you may have to struggle out of bed just to get to lunch on time. In exchange for forty-four grand, you get regular meals, access to campus buildings, about 15 hours a week of classes, and more books that you can read in a lifetime. (I am somewhere between my freshman and sophomore year, in terms of catching up on the required reading.) Many colleges throw in a fitness center and a homecoming parade. Come spring, more than a few tolerate a toga party. But instead of a year at college, for the same money you could take about 30 cruises (promising about the same number of drinks, but fewer term papers).
I realize that pricing college by the day will strike most readers as cynical. At least I did not dwell on how much it costs per class hour (roughly $97.77). How can anyone put an hourly price on education? Isn’t college about having the time to discover the violin concertos of Mozart or the novels of Theodore Dreiser? Plus it prepares you for the so-called real world, in which few people would get a job if they showed up in a Personnel office and explained that during the last four years they had taken 120 cruises—even if they were comparable to four years at Brown.
I have been thinking about colleges and college costs because my oldest daughter is 18 and this year graduates from high school. Because we live in Switzerland, we have spent time during the last few years visiting campuses on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. My college-tour conclusions are as follows: most European colleges look like public housing while in the U.S. even the state universities resemble five-star resorts. (F. Scott Fitzgerald called Princeton the “the pleasantest country club in America.”) I would enroll in any of the schools we visited. Seen from the perspective of middle age, what could be more enjoyable than four years on campus, reading books, attending lectures, working out, and eating meals with your friends? At the University of Maine, in Orono, I was even pleased to discover a dorm for thirtysomethings that frowns on music, smoking, liquor and drugs—what my friend Rob describes as a “no-fun house.” But it would suit a father of three teenagers, at least in my escapist dreams.
Appealing as most college campuses are, I know the reality of the course work is something else. Let’s face it: many university professors could not teach their way out of the third grade, when it comes to engaging a class. At my undergraduate university—Bucknell, in Lewisburg, PA—a story circulated of one professor who was celebrated for falling asleep during his own lectures. In other classes I remember confronting the dismal literature of social science—all those dreary textbooks about “social stratification” and “zero-sum games”—and being asked to read 700 pages of Thomas Mann “by Tuesday.” Sadly, it was only after college that I discovered the pleasures of reading and independent study, or encountered authors who wrote in a language that engaged my curiosity. As much as I enjoyed college and then graduate school at Columbia, I often found the reading lists tedious, the lectures arcane, and the professors worth something less than $97.77 an hour.
The problem with most university classes is this: you read a few books, take some illegible notes, write up three papers, and then sell the books back to the bookstore before going home for Christmas. Missing, except from a handful of students or teachers, is a passion for learning, an engagement with the subjects. I thought about this as my daughter and I were taking one college tour after another. Yes, it is a marvel that the schools have art museums, climbing walls, indoor pools, and Starbucks in the library. But in visiting American colleges, I found them sadly devoid of ideas, at least in their public relations. Where was the delight of intense conversation or of a great book? Harvard struck me as a staid English men’s club. Bowdoin looked to be copied from the pages of an L.L. Bean catalogue (degrees available in teal and hunter green). NYU was punk-rockish, as if all the lectures had been podcast. The more campuses we saw, the more I wanted to start my own university, one that would attract like-minded and passionate students and faculty. No more charging $44,000 and then assigning a class some unreadable article from the Journal of Phenomenological Studies.
For lack of a better name, I have been calling my utopian college Baseball University (BBU). It could be anywhere, but it might be more fun if the climate reminded everyone of spring training. Nor does it have to look like a traditional campus, with a bell tower and a Carnegie library. A nineteenth century field, with a rope as the outfield wall, could well define the campus. Some of the more popular classes could meet in skyboxes. Set between the university buildings I could imagine batting cages and softball diamonds, if not just the markings for stickball. During freshman orientation, everyone will read The Glory of Their Times by Lawrence Ritter. Those majoring in international relations might be assigned Robert Whiting’s You Gotta Have Wa, an account of Americans who have gone to play baseball in Japan. Over the front door of the Charles Dillon Stengel Library would be the inspiring words: “You could look it up.”
Even though Baseball University would be a delight to students and faculty, it would not be a gut. To graduate would require 32 credits, and a senior thesis, written with the stylistic clarity of a Red Smith or Ring Lardner, Jr. column. All students will take four years of mathematics (Statistical Modeling and the Use of Relief Pitchers would be required) and four years of languages (Spanish and Japanese are recommended). Pre-med students would have to take the necessary courses in biology and chemistry (known informally on campus as “the clear and the cream”). Liberal arts candidates could fulfill their science requirements by taking such popular surveys as “Steroids for Seniors” or “Knuckleballs,” given by the physics department. Instead of a yearbook, the college will distribute everyone’s baseball card, with their grade-point average on the back and a few words for prospective dates, such as: “Likes to hunt and fish in the off-season.” Professors with low averages will be cut.
Nearly all the subjects taught at conventional colleges will be offered at BBU; the only difference is that the curriculum will draw its inspiration, if not its case studies, from the world of baseball. English classes, for example, instead of reading George Eliot or William Faulkner would assign books like Bernard Malamud’s The Natural or Philip Roth’s The Great American Novel. In the economics department, students would study the impact of a salary cap on major league baseball’s finances. My friend Doug Adler, whose father worked for the 1962 Mets and who is keen on the idea of BBU, would be appointed the first provost.
I have yet to complete the course catalog, but some of the offerings would include: Wave Theory of a Fork Ball; Management Philosophy from John McGraw to Tony La Russa; Models of Municipal Finance in Stadium Economics; Dinger: An Introduction to Baseball Linguistics; The Iconography of Babe Ruth; Baseball in the Developing World; Faux Pas: The Civil Engineering Pretensions of New Ballparks; Minor League Films; and A Comparative History of the Negro Leagues and Civil Rights. My guess is that many professors would line up to teach these courses, so we could forget about having to offer tenure to attract mediocre academics.
Students of all ages, provided they met the university standards, would be encouraged to enroll. An exception might be made for barbers with a deep knowledge of the game. The calendar year at BBU would run from late February until October, with the fall break coinciding with the World Series. Why be away from campus during the nicest months of the year? During the winter semester, however, students would be encouraged to continue their studies in Venezuela or the Dominican Republic. Some might do independent study in Korea. Of course, students piling into cars to visit Fort Lauderdale would be given extra credit, provided at the beach they read either Why Time Begins on Opening Day, by Thomas Boswell, or Sparky Lyle’s The Bronx Zoo (a prerequisite for those studying abnormal psychology).
I have thought a lot about the design of the classrooms, with the initial notion that some could resemble booths at a sports bar. But the presence of large screen TVs and pitchers of beer, in my experience, never leads to interesting conversations. All anyone does is watch the game and munch on salty popcorn. In fact, the seminar rooms at BBU should look like corporate offices or cubicles, as it is in these settings that people have their most intense conversations—be they about baseball or life. Some smaller classes might even want to stand around a water cooler, preferably one once overturned by Tamp Bay manager Lou Piniella. Faculty members, however, would have to hold a certain number of office hours in the campus bleachers. What could be nicer than to talk to a professor while watching the summer game?
Because BBU is a university, and not some booster club for the major leagues, it would be a fountainhead of new ideas on ways to interpret and change baseball. The lovely on-campus stadium would encourage games between national teams from countries like Cuba and Panama, in anticipation of the World Cup of Baseball. Exhibitions featuring retired stars could be hosted, followed by lecturers or poetry readings. (Wasn't it Robert Frost who said that when you come a fork in the woods, "take it"?) The university would publish journal articles attacking baseball’s antitrust exemption, which, if lifted, would encourage investors to develop rival teams and leagues around the country—the major leagues simply being the best of the best, not those in the owners’ union. The World Series would be just that: a tournament of world’s best teams. Iconoclastic commentators on the game—such as Jim Bouton, the author of Ball Four—will be invited to spend a semester at BBU as writers-in-residence. Spaceman Bill Lee would be awarded an honorary degree. During the homecoming weekend, the bonfire could be stoked with Astroturf.
The great thing about Baseball University is that the professors would love teaching there, and the students would come with a passion for learning. How many times in college did you labor through a course on Political Geography or the early novels of Nathaniel Hawthorne only to discover, during the end-of-the-year picnic, that the professor both worshipped the Chicago Cubs and could discuss them passionately for hours? At BBU, that vibrant, switched-on professor would be the one in the classroom. (During nights and weekends, he or she could sneak into the family room to read The Marble Faun or find Bratislava on a map.) Likewise, students would come to every class with at least some background understanding of the subject under discussion. I am all for teaching American history, but how many college freshmen can comprehend the Depression economics of President Herbert Hoover? (Who did Smoot Hawley play for, anyway?) Seen through the contract negotiations of Babe Ruth, however, they might at least have a better year. Who knows, it might even be worth $44,000, which, looked at another way, doesn’t even get you a skybox at Camden Yards.
