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Abstract
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Historically, institutions of higher education in the United States have been at the center of growth and understanding in our society. Individuals in higher educa- tion have both identified where societal needs exist and made proactive efforts to address the needs over the long run. This process appears to have failed to hold true in aquatics. It is well documented that few academic institutions currently offer either major or minor curricula or degrees in aquatics.
I think that aquatic higher education started to decline a few decades ago for several reasons. Some of these reasons include the fact that 20 years ago there were tightening budgets in state funding for academic institutions. Aquatic programs with a low representation of both faculty and students became an easy discipline to cut or simply underfund. As budgets continued to be cut and state subsidies continued to drop from almost 50% to less than 25% of university budgets, there were fewer options for continuing or expanding aquatic-degree programs. To be taught appropriately, most aquatics-related courses require faculty with very specific experiences, qualifications, and expertise who must retain specialized certifications. In addition, some of these same aquatic management or leadership courses require quite specialized equipment that is an expensive burden for college organizations to purchase and maintain. When we look at the operational sector versus academia, it is easy to see through wages and compensation that educational institutions have a difficult time retaining faculty, who can make $10,000-20,000 more per year as aquatic professionals in the operational sector for the same or lower qualifications. I see this with our graduates in aquatics; each of our graduates has started at a higher pay rate than our lowest paid faculty member. In addition, because of the typical expectations for continually conducting and publishing research as a member of the professoriate, it is very difficult for aquatics-related faculty to earn tenure and be promoted because aquatics is not always held in high regard in academia. So, not only do they get paid less, but they also have much greater job demands than would be true in the operational sector.
Language: en |