From the perspective of an undergraduate, Binghamton University provides resources and facilities for motivated students to educate themselves. Hiring a high-caliber faculty, maintaining an extensive library, providing quality food, housing and advising for students all takes massive amounts of money.

If more money means more resources for undergraduate students, then we should all endorse the University administration taking steps to increase cash flow, such as making the leap into D-I sports and requiring teaching professors to win grant money for the University. This leads to the lucrative selling of advertising and merchandise, and more money for departments.

However, undergraduates do not see the benefits of money earned through these processes. Tuition was recently raised, but current students saw only the number of classes offered drop significantly, and class sizes increase. If the money raised isn’t being reinvested into providing more resources for undergraduate students, where is it going? It seems that a large portion has gone toward creating a strong D-I athletic program and creating more dormitories to house a larger student body, or advertising the upcoming law school.

In short, the University reinvests its money in programs that raise capital for the University, and, of course, pays the administration.

While the strong athletic program certainly increases school spirit, the events of the past year have exemplified how it has actually lowered academic standards in the process. Basketball players were granted special exemptions from the academic standards to which all other students were held.

The creation of a law school may raise Binghamton’s national ranking, which affects the amount of money the University receives, but it still doesn’t benefit undergraduates. Professors who win large grants also raise the ranking of the University and allow the faculty to further pursue their own research interests. I have no issue with this.

However, it follows that the higher-ranked an institution is, the more focused the professors tend to be on their own research. Actually, teaching students tends to have a lower priority. Binghamton is known as a research institution, and we have all had the experience of being in a class with a brilliant professor who is just completely incapable of teaching.

As the administration has become focused on raising capital, students are being viewed merely as human resources. The number of students correlates to the amount of cash that can be generated. While this is completely rational from the standpoint of the administration, it is unsettling for motivated students interested in extracting every last bit of value they can get out of the undergraduate experience.

While providing students with a balanced and broad liberal arts education used to be the mission of Harpur College, the initial foundation of Binghamton University, we have strayed from that mission in favor of boxing students into specific majors, pitched as a necessary preparation for finding a job in a particular field.

An undergraduate major does not necessarily correlate to the job one pursues after college. In fact, college should be a time of really determining one’s interests. It’s difficult to do this as a 19-year-old sophomore.

Of course, convincing undergraduates to participate in specific programs and emerge from Binghamton with a bachelor of science, or a high grade point average certainly increases the rank of the University. Whether the student is genuinely interested in the field, or even gets much out of the educational experience, becomes secondary.

In the end, it all comes back to money.