Is Higher Education A Leisure Pool?

Accuracy in Academia ^ | May 18, 2015 | Malcolm A. Kline

[Academiadotorg]

A group called College Rank has helpfully compiled a list of colleges with the best leisure pools in academe, some replete with lazy rivers.

"Recreational facilities and amenities have become a major part of the appeal of college campuses around the country,” Mackenzi Flannery, the article's author says. “Our list highlights some of the top leisure pool facilities and what those options provide to students as they look to complete their collegiate experience with some downtime in the water."

While you peruse the list, you might ponder whether cash-strapped parents who send their children to these spas-with-degrees-attached can afford their own leisure pools:

• Auburn University

• California State University at Fullerton

• California State University at Long Beach

• Central Florida University

• Colorado State University

• Highpoint University

• Iowa State University

• Kent State University

• Missouri State University

• Nova Southeastern University

• Oklahoma State University

• Pensacola Christian College

• Pepperdine University

• Rice University

• Rollins College

• Texas State University

• Texas Tech University

• University of Akron

• University of Alabama

• University of Alabama at Birmingham

• University of California at Berkeley

• University of California at Los Angeles

• University of Colorado

• University of Florida - Gulf Coast

• University of Houston

• University of Iowa

• University of Miami

• University of Missouri

• University of South Carolina

• University of Texas at Austin

[Academiadotorg]

Are leisure pools a part of many American campuses or an all-purpose description?

[Da Coyote]

Use of the pools is directly peoportional to the uselessness of the user’s academic major.

[henkster]

So what. Most of them have golf courses too. Frankly, I thought the rec facilities were pretty poor back in the late 1970s. The weight room was too small, hence too crowded, and not well equipped. The indoor track was OK for running in the winter, but nothing special. There were plenty of basketball courts for pick up games, but the surface was hell on the ankles. Not nearly enough softball diamonds.

If the rec facilities get the kids out to exercise, then its better than smoking pot, playing video games and watching porn.

[Organic Panic]

The precious delicate flowers must be protected from the outside world at all costs.

[Opinionated Blowhard]

Remember this story the next time the press screams about Walker’s or some other GOP official’s “harsh cuts” to the higher education budget. I guess it is harsh if you expect to work or study in a palace with state-of-the-art “leisure pools” and you find out you have to work or study in just another government building.

[SMARTY]

When I was a student, I wouldn’t have had the time to enjoy any of that stuff... I was too busy with school work and my various JOBS that I had to do, in order to stay IN school.

[sphinx]

How does a leisure pool differ from a regular swimming pool?

A university of any size will have a fairly substantial athletic complex which doubles for physical education and recreation. My dim recollection from many years ago was that most of the regular users of the weight room, the pools, and the indoor track, etc. were doing pretty serious workouts. Once in awhile, a casual jogger came through, but the casual joggers mostly stayed outside and ran near their dorms, as opposed to trekking to the central campus to go to an athletic center.

This was IU in the 1970's, so swimming was a SERIOUS sport. Doc Councilman was a legend, Bob Knight had just arrived, Sam Bell had a great thing going in track, and Jerry Yeagley had just moved men's soccer from a club sport to varsity, where he proceeded to build one of the first great programs utilizing mostly U.S. players. (He used to take teams to the Final Four, and won his share, when IU had all the American players, and were facing other countries' national teams.)

IU at that time had possibly the best overall athletic program in the country, except of course for football, where we maintained IU's ancient tradition of futility. I gather that things have gone downhill in Bloomington since then, due to a shift in priorities by the administration in the 1990's.

[sphinx]

Use of the pools is directly peoportional to the uselessness of the user’s academic major.

There's a difference between lounging at a pool and swimming seriously for fitness. I saw plenty of the latter in college, partly by students who had swum competitively in club sports or high school, and partly by those who didn't like running and/or wanted to vary their routine. Of course, that was the Doc Councilman-John Kinsella-Mike Stamm-Mark Spitz era at IU, so swimming had a certain status on campus.

[Go_Raiders]

I learned to SCUBA dive in a leisure pool at a State College 32 years ago. It was an elective course and gave me a skill that I parlayed into 15 years as a volunteer diver with the County Sheriff’s Department. A couple of the guys who took that class went on to careers as salvage divers in the San Francisco Bay Area.

I have no problem with pools at any level of education, even just learning to swim has probably saved hundreds of lives of college grads over the years.

[Political Junkie Too]

I suspect that these leisure pools are micro-agessions waiting to happen.

You have your:

• Bikini clad women making girls feel inadequate
• Girls being hit on by boys
• Boys being hit on by boys
• Muslims offended by whatever
• Race, Race, Race
• Fashion suits making the poor uncomfortable

Shut it down, for everyone's sake!

-PJ

[The_Reader_David]

I remind my fellow FReepers that this rot is coming from the professional managerial class — in this instance university administrators, often aided and abetted by state legislators — NOT the professoriate. Professors nearly to a man think that the amount of money our institutions spend on student amenities is some combination of absurd and obscene, and oppose boondoggles like “leisure pools” and golf courses being attached to universities, but in vain, because except for Harvard and Yale there is not meaningful faculty governance any more.

[RightOnTheBorder]

At Purdue University, most all the engineering buildings are built with a “basement” story that rises just high enough above grade to put in some short windows. These lower levels are then used for technical labs, computer labs and such. I remember many a pleasant spring day watching the calves and ankles of the liberal arts majors frolicking in the public spaces as I sat hunched over a computer.

[JoeFromSidney]

It used to be said that "College bred was a four-year loaf." Maybe that's still true.

[Academiadotorg]

Ralph Bennett, editor emeritus at Readers’ Digest, once said, “I loved college. It was like a Bing Crosby movie.”