I love football. I know it's flawed; I'm aware of all the ethical concerns that come along with watching football. But I love it. I can't get enough of it. I would gladly watch football all day Saturday and Sunday and then spend the rest of the week watching highlights and chat shows about football. This year's Superbowl was great, even though I was on the losing side (DAMMIT! Pete Carroll), I loved it. It was a great game. But I am less enthusiastic about the Superbowl's venue.
The Patriots and the Seahawks (DAMMIT! Pete Carroll) met in Glendale, AZ and played in a shiny new stadium named for The University of Phoenix. The stadium wasn't build for the university's football team. The University doesn't have a football team. This begs the question: why would on earth would a university without a football team buy the naming rights to a football stadium?
Like all things these days, lets follow the money. The University of Phoenix is a for-profit school with an extremely low graduation rate (below 15% for some campuses and 35% overall.) They market their university as a great option to study from home rather than commute to campus, and this is likely attractive to a lot of people. But, so few students actually graduate! If state universities had graduation rates as low as these online schools, they'd fail, with politicians and taxpayers demanding higher standards for their tax money. Fortunately for The University of Phoenix, they don't rely on tax money.
Or do they?
The University of Phoenix receives over 80% of their revenue from federal student loans. Additionally, they received over $1 billion from the GI Bill alone over the last five years. Let me just write that out: $1,000,000,000.00 in federal funds meant to benefit veterans. The whole for-profit college system brought in over $32 billion from federal money in 2010 alonewith eight of the top ten recipients of the GI Bill benefits as for- profit schools. In return, over 65% of the students never get a diploma and the ones that do are heavily in debt (for profit schools average twice the cost of non profit schools). As such, they have few employment opportunities with their online degree.
Here's a phrase we need to bring back: war profiteering.
The problem is so obvious you'd think even our historically incompetent congress would do something about it. Something as simple as saying no university can accept GI Bill benefits without having at least a 65% graduation rate. But congress won't fix this. Do you know why? I bet you do: the largest campaign donor to the Chairman of the House Committee on Education and Workforce is the University of Phoenix. Moreover, the top four non-profit college companies spent over $16 million lobbying Congress and the Veterans Administration. They've bought themselves the right to fund their shitty schools on your tax dollars and to the grievous disadvantage of the American vets trying to earn a degree. The University of Phoenix paid $154 million for the naming rights to the stadium in Arizona. It's theirs until 2026. Imagine what $154 million would have meant to soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Kind of takes the shine of the Superbowl a bit, doesn't it? Even if you're a Pats fan.