Following Sports as a Pious Ritual of Civic Loyalty

From the Centre College Alumni Survey

I asked if there were any sports teams (professional, college, or other) that the respondents followed closely. 60% of all respondents named at least one team.

The leader by far was University of Kentucky basketball. 34% said they followed some UK team - by far the largest first choice category. Another 11% followed University of Louisville teams. Besides UK and U of L (and the 2% of Centre Colonels die-hards), college teams drew another 18%. Altogether, college teams drew the first loyalty of 2/3rds of those who followed sports.

Professional football, the next largest category, drew only 15%, professional baseball 8%, and professional basketball barely registered at 1%.

As I noted yesterday, half the Centre alumni live in Kentucky and adjacent states. There are no major league teams in any sport in Kentucky, and the Cincinnati professional teams draw the first loyalty of only 5% of the alumni. I read this strong loyalty of Centre alumni to Kentucky college teams as a way of participating in the emotional bonds of the community. As the great sociologist Emile Durkheim noted, our fundamental ties to society are emotional before they are rational. In Kentucky, following UK or U of L teams, especially the mens' basketball teams, is a pious act of belonging in the civil religion.

"How 'bout them Cats (or Cards)?" is part of the litany of building up the community that most Centre Colonels are part of.

Low Dispersion of Alumni

This is another in a series of findings from the Centre College Alumni Survey.

About 40% of the alumni live in Kentucky. About 60% of current students come from Kentucky, and this has been true for some time.

I am glad that Centre College serves the commonwealth so well, both in educating its children and in providing educated citizens. I think, though, that our ambition to be a more national college would be enhanced if our alumni were spread around the country a bit more.

I can think of three good reasons the alumni stick so close to home. First, Kentucky is a nice place to live, and many have family there. This is especially helpful when they start families of their own.

Second, the Old Colonels network is famously helpful. It is densest, and can be most helpful, in Kentucky.

Third, about two thirds of the graduates get further education, and most of them do so from a small number of nearby universities. I believe this is the single biggest factor in why the alumni settle so close to the college (relatively speaking).

The lesson I take from this is that we should be more conscious of encouraging our graduates to go further afield - and to more nationally weighty universities - for their graduate work. This would naturally take some of them into broader networks of professional life.

Most Old People Find Their Lives Turned Out Better Than They Expected

The Pew Research Center has produced a fine study of aging. It has several fascinating comparisons of what young people think makes you old with what older people think makes you old.

The line that stood out to me, though, is the Gruntled Finding of the Week:

Nearly half (45%) of adults ages 75 and older say their life has turned out better than they expected, while just 5% say it has turned out worse

Among all older adults, happiness varies very little by age, gender or race.

Happy Independence Day, Fellow Creatures.

We
hold these
truths
to be self-evident, that all men are
created
equal

Generational Growth of Legacies.

An interesting finding from the Centre alumni survey:

29% of the respondents claimed a relative who had attended Centre. Of them, roughly:
10% claimed a relative in the grandparent generation
20% claimed a relative in the parent generation (including aunts and uncles)
30% claimed a relative in the respondents own generation (siblings or cousins)

Alumni Survey

I have begun to post the results of the Centre College alumni survey on a new website, https://sites.google.com/a/centre.edu/centre-alumni-survey/

Your comments are most welcome.

What to Do With Engineers?

This is always a problem in the professions and "knowledge class" discussion. Engineers apply a body of knowledge to problems in a way that can not readily be routinized. This is the starting point for considering a profession. Yet they are often the outliers in other cultural measures of professionals.

Alvin Gouldner, in The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class made a distinction between "intellectuals" and the "technical intelligentsia." They differ in the kinds of knowledge they use. They are both part of the "new class" - what later came to be called the "knowledge class" - because they both make their living from knowledge that is essential to running the economic system. That is the Marxist part of Gouldner's determination of a class. They are also both part of the knowledge class because they rise to the defense of knowledge and reason when they are under attack. When the thugs burn books, the engineers join the barricades. When rationality, or even science, are under attack, engineers and cultural specialists stand shoulder to shoulder.

I think what unifies all professions is that the body of knowledge they must apply is vast, so applying the right bit of knowledge requires judgment. What unifies most professions is that they apply knowledge to people, and people are infinitely various. A vast body of knowledge applied to varied people makes for lots of judgments. Engineers apply a vast body of knowledge, too. This requires judgment. But for the most part, the problems they apply that knowledge to are not people. That makes their knowledge work different in kind from that of most other professionals.

Nonetheless, I am counting engineers as professionals.