Colleges take gamble on casino studies

Michael Gormley

Monday, Aug. 16, 2004 | 9:12 a.m.

ALBANY, N.Y. -- Ivy walls and ivory towers now have back rooms and they're churning out blackjack dealers and casino managers.

Public colleges nationwide are increasingly offering casino and gambling majors and courses as states, mostly through Indian tribes, turn to casinos for gambling revenues.

Hands-on study takes on a new definition in these courses that include laboratories with green felt card tables and red-and-black roulette wheels. Casino nights, using play money, are held on and off campus, often for charity. Field trips to Las Vegas, Atlantic City and the countless Indian casinos in between are part of the course load.

In the last five years or so, the courses and majors have cropped up at colleges including San Diego State University, Michigan State University, Tulane University's University College in New Orleans, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. They join the pioneering UNLV and UNR in Las Vegas and Reno, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Courses range from the study of gambling laws around the country to operating on sovereign Indian land, plus biometrics and "facial recognition" for casino security. Other courses train students to be pit bosses, dealers and slot machine repairers.

"I spent 25 years in the business and I always wanted to bring education to the gaming industry," said Peter LaMacchia, director of the six-year-old casino studies at the State University of New York's Morrisville State College. "When I started, the business was about who you know, rather than what you knew."

Morrisville is considering expanding casino-related studies, including a possible four-year degree in the entertainment and gaming electronics.

Not everyone wants to let this trend ride.

"It's disgusting," said state Sen. Frank Padavan, a Queens Republican and vocal opponent of New York's reliance on gambling revenues to balance budgets. "I think it's inappropriate for the state to become a vehicle by which people are in increasing numbers addicted ... To have that policy reinforced through a curriculum in a public university is reprehensible."

The National Council on Problem Gambling notes that campus gambling isn't new: 4.5 million of the nation's 15.3 million college students will gamble on sports this year.

"It saddens me that SUNY is involved in such a cynical and insidious process, one that fuels anti-social gambling pathologies while subordinating and suborning its basic institutional mission -- education, not training," said State University of New York Trustee Candace de Russy.

SUNY spokesman David Henahan counters that public universities must also provide jobs to help the state's work force. At San Diego State University, where the casino industry was screaming for help, a professional certificate in gaming was offered this past spring to serve employers and boost college revenues.

"We're overenrolled," said William Byxbee, dean of the college of extended studies at San Diego State. "We have lists like you can't believe. If we could get more faculty, we could run classes all the time."

The first course -- which costs $240 -- had 35 students this spring. The second course also had 35, with a waiting list of 40. San Diego County is home to 16 Indian-owned casinos that attract 40,000 players daily and employ 12,000 people.

"They are lined up to hire people," Byxbee said Friday, one day after a casino announced plans to triple in size and add 4,000 employees.

The efforts have faced sometimes religious opposition and Mississippi prohibits casino courses in public colleges, said Richard Marksbury, dean of Tulane University's University College in New Orleans, which offers an associate's degree in casino studies.

"I think anyone who is doing it right now is in a pioneering effort and, anytime you're in a pioneering effort, respect isn't the first thing you're going to get," Marksbury said.

In New York's Catskill Mountains, Sullivan County Community College took a gamble on adding a casino concentration in its club management degree. There are several proposed casinos in the former Borscht Belt of upstate New York, though none has gotten final regulatory approval.

"There are opportunities," said college spokeswoman Judy Eurich. "This would seem to be a growing industry."