Filthy Lucre in Academia (and everything else)

The American Public Media program Marketplace carried a story on March 6, 2008, about the Berlin Polar Bears, a professional ice hockey team left over from the old East Germany. The Polar Bears have been playing in a rather primitive arena hard by the old Berlin Wall called the Sheet Metal Palace—definitely a relic of the pre-1991 Berlin. Soon, the Polar Bears are to move into an American-style sports arena built, as one would expect, by an American management firm. The old arena’s signature attributes, an atmosphere much like an airplane hangar and a certain old locker room smell, will be replaced by corporate sponsorship and luxurious sky boxes.

What caught my attention most was a statement by a Berlin hockey fan who said that such changes were to be expected because everything comes down to money. “It’s sad”, he said. And that’s the interesting part. When didn't it come down to money? The Sheet Metal Palace cost somebody something.

The fan’s lament sounds much like what we hear from university and independent school faculty about how things at school eventually boil down to being about money. “Filthy lucre”, we call it in a recent Leading Trends article. Seems like somewhere along the line we have become as detached from thinking about money in and money out as we have become about the origin of our food. And not thinking about where our food or money comes from is a big problem!