Bad news. KU’s U.S. News & World Report ranking as a top 50 public university, and top 100 major university, has fallen further.

We’re still in, but just barely, tied for 45th and 97th, respectively. Missouri, Colorado, Iowa State, Texas, and Texas A&M, all rank ahead, and we’ve been caught by Nebraska. Oklahoma is in the rear-view mirror, but not too far behind. Of state universities in the Big 12 Conference, we’re only appreciably ahead of Kansas State, Oklahoma State, and Texas Tech. But there is good news; the Fiske Guide to Colleges rates us a “best buy.”

I live near campus, and, with my daughter, I recently drove through campus, past fraternities and sororities near the Chi Omega Fountain, then along Jayhawk Boulevard, and past Watson Library. It was “bid night,” and with freshman girls learning their fate, the houses were abuzz. But, campus was empty. The first Friday of school and, at 9 p.m., the only person we saw on campus was a solitary jogger, no one entering or emerging from the library. It was simply empty.

My daughter, who graduated last spring from a top 10 private school, commented: “How different. Classes are started, and where are the students? How strange no one is on campus or around the library?” In her experience students were ready, and engaged, on the first day of class; they were gunning from the start. The library at her school was always buzzing, the in and out, on campus, was nonstop.

I am both a seller and a buyer of college education. With four children between the ages of 18 and 24, and three in college at the same time, I’ve been buying. On the supply side, I’ve taught a Western Civ honors discussion at KU for 15 years. So, my daughter’s observation about the desolation of campus hit home.

Classes started the next Thursday, a day that has always been a throw away for substantive coursework. The lecture will not happen until next Tuesday, so we have nothing to discuss that first Thursday, other than a general orientation. I don’t know whether the first Thursday and Friday are a “throw away” for all, but they tend to be in Western Civ.

Something I learned in athletics is that nothing is neutral, everything makes us either better or worse. Do a couple of “throw away” days matter?

I’ve been heard to weigh in on another recent KU issue. Long a supporter of KU football, I’ve chosen to give up my season football tickets. I have come to believe that the focus on competitiveness in NCAA Division I athletics, particularly in the revenue-producing sports (read football and basketball), is at odds with the mission of the university.

I do not see that the level of investment in intercollegiate sports “moves the ball” academically. Ignoring the question of the “good” it does for scholarship athletes (a debatable question beyond the limitations of this space), how does the commitment to athletics contribute to the academic standing of the university as a whole? However much fun it may be, will a bowl-bound football team, or a Final Four basketball team, put more students in the library on the first Friday night of classes?

I wonder whether the drop in our academic rankings is a matter of emphasis. What messages are we sending to our students? What is the emphasis, what is our highest priority? Stop by the fieldhouse complex, look at the facilities devoted to athletics, read about the demands/needs for greater funding and the associated fundraising efforts. Consider what we pay athletics administrators and coaches, and ask yourself honestly whether students should be generally expected to believe that academics has the highest priority on our campus.

It is the students, after all, who will decide. Student performance drives the academic reputation of a college. Students establish the ranking of a university by their devotion to study. Learning is different from degree seeking. Are our students here to learn, or obtain a degree? KU’s academic legacy may make KU, as Fiske calls it, a “best buy,” but without an academic commitment, can that reputation be maintained? Without a good academic reputation, can KU remain a “best buy”?

If a great university can be described as a place where the desire to learn is encouraged and nurtured, is a “best buy” something less, perhaps a place to have a good time while getting a good deal on a degree?