see above - 12 of 21 are appointed by the Governor, 3 ex-officio Commissioners are appointed by the Governor, one is the Governor
appointed by the Governor after serving as vice Chair of BOT for many years
Reasonable questions can absolutely be asked regarding some politically-appointed BOT members' credentials and those of some elected BOT members. One way to improve qualifications of the latter is for far more alumni to actually vote in BOT elections versus ignoring messages and ending up with results of some minimal-participant popularity votes. Historically, a few too many appointed BOT members have been the result of both parties' gubernatorial whims, favors, etc.
Glad you cleared that up. It was Jim Kennelly not John BTW. My bad.
I’m not saying that good sports can’t or don’t boost interest. That article says that higher level applicants don’t care as much about athletics but overall their applications do increase, in what I assume are already academically solid schools like Michigan or UNC. The article doesn’t state how significant that increase is amongst better students, but that whole half of the argument doesn’t need to be discussed. There surely is a net gain from having good athletics if the academics are decent, however small that gain may be.
Great use of selective references and distorted characterizations. A simple litmus test is advertisers spend billions on advertising because it works. Free national network time is worth a lot. Brand matters. Perceived cache matters. Next, the competitive increase occurred over 25 years not from 2008 . It's not disputed. If you had a modest clue, you would know the high school students in Alabama are considerably lower performing compared to CT northeast students (stat- check the National Merit Scholar state qualification cut off scores ). Thus, Alabama , a state school, draws from a lower performing applicant pool in state. You would also know that Alabama gives free rides to National Merit Scholar finalists whereas most competitive schools don't do that. But, it's clear you have all the facts...
Oh so we are going to discount a third of that period that included 3 final fours and 2 NCs because it doesn't fit the narrative.
Oh, so you’re telling me kids in New England are better students overall. What a shock! And even greater so that they boosted UConn’s academic profile while kids in Alabama failed to elevate their state school. I was in the Engineering school and knew many other STEM kids i.e. the people who have boosted UConn's student profile. None of us came to UConn because of sports. None of them were in the student section when Hash put that triple double up on Providence. I was an outlier. UConn's desirability to the quality kids of New England was at best trivially increased by sports success. The consolidation of intellect explains UConn's rise more than what JC did on the court. Anything else you think correlates with having begun around 20-25 years ago? Maybe that little thing called UConn 2000?
I'm sorry you're from NJ...but Rutgers was always a decent school. There was a time until the 8os and prior when Rutgers was superior in academic standing to UConn and truth be told, they probably still are a better research institution in terms of capacity and breadth because they have been at it longer. You just haven't been on the earth long enough to know or appreciate that. Rutgers sucks because it was and remains situated in the armpit of US.. northern jersey.. I know because my family fled Elizabeth , Linden and Rahway in the late 1960s, and those that didn't are worse the wear.
Got nothing left besides talking smack about Jersey. Sad. FWIW I agree on Jersey being generally undesirable; it’s either crummy areas like where your family and my dad grew up, or boring suburb areas. Haven’t been in the state (even my nicer town) for longer than a week or so since I left for UConn. But I’d take Jersey long-term over the majority of the other states in the union if for nothing more than good school districts and proximity to NY. But that’s as far as I will go to quasi-defend the state.
