Almost all graduates of post-secondary institutions remain enthusiastic supporters of their alma mater long after graduation.
Some 50 years later, former students can be seen at football games in winter-like weather, disregarding hazards to their health to cheer their university team, usually football or hockey.
That kind of enthusiasm is expected by university officials who are keen to retain the loyalty of their graduates, hoping that it will be translated into generous fundraising contributions to the university.
All that goes a long way to explain the tremendous efforts by universities to field winning teams. Disgruntled graduates are not a source of lavish fundraising activities.
What is surprising, however, is the absurd lengths that these universities go to in order to have winning teams.
Clearly, the almost entire purpose of post-secondary institutions is to turn out educated citizens. Most go to extraordinary lengths to recruit the best and brightest as university students.
That would include extra-curricular work that will benefit the community and shed a glowing light on the university.
Therefore, the admissions centres winnow the list of applicants as carefully as possible to ensure that their graduates receive a wide acclaim, and that some of that rubs off on the postgraduate institution.
Nevertheless, those criteria seem to be almost forgotten in new trends that are underway. Athletic centres and their coaches increasingly have opened their own admissions centres.
They go out of their way to recruit youngsters with special athletic prowess, those youths whose academic credentials are often second-rate at best.
Athletic coaches operating their own admissions offices focus almost solely on an applicant’s athletic ability.
In return, they offer very significant financial assistance. All but forgotten is the real objective of a university degree.
Obviously, universities need funds, particularly the private ones.
However, one would be justified in assuming, for instance, that McGill University, the University of Toronto and in the United States places such as Harvard and Yale, would be able to attract students who were exceptionally qualified academically.
Scholarships and bursary grants should go to them, rather than to someone who may be a great football player.
That is a situation where “the tail is wagging the dog,” with upside down “thinking” distorting a university degree.