Perhaps it sounds heretical, but how hard would it be to shift all the funding schools receive for sports into academics? Also, where exactly does the funding for sports at major Universities come from?
At schools where sports are profitable, the profits are indeed taken in by the university and used for academics, facilities, etc.
http://chronicle.com/article/NCAA-Signs-108-Billion-Deal/652...
The Rose Bowl (one college football game) alone is $300 Million over eight years.
Basically basketball and football subsidize the other sports. Shift that funding into academics and you lose the other sports.
My question is, I guess, why aren't schools founded around the idea of education? It's the same feeling I have towards fraternities and sororities. I find it incredible that most people tout school as a place to learn, and yet it's quite obvious that a lot of people attend for any reason but that.
They receive a disproportionate focus even when they are not. The main reason is academic politics: a physics professor is busy doing research, while the athletic department has time for lobbying.
I see basically two types of programs: a handful which exist solely to drive money and prestige to the university (big-time football, basketball, etc.) without regard to the tiny number of students participating, and the vast majority which are mostly focused on their primary purpose, providing a great experience for the athletes themselves.
I don't see many programs which are sucking a bunch of money away from research for nothing.
Incidentally, universities pocket about 50% of research money and put it into the general fund, which then gets spent on stuff like varsity sports.
Yes, thank you. If they're going to pay for someone to play football, they might as well fund me to play Chess or Go. They could probably also fund that guy down the hall from me to play Tetris all day; I'm sure he'd be able to find something "educational" in that.
I read somewhere the suggestion that basketball and football players in big time programs have the option of majoring in their sport, just like a Dance, Drama or Art major might. At least it would drop the pretense that those students are doing anything else.
Further, your argument about recreational activities for a few can be applied to pretty much every non-class activity at a university, from theater to quiz bowl to student radio. Why single out athletics?
The universities are making the decision to encourage sports participation because they understand its value in education.
I'm not totally sure (so please correct me if I'm wrong), but here are my best guesses:
- Money for sports complexes, stadiums, etc. mostly comes from donors who want to help make their alma mater more competitive and/or get something named after themselves.
- Conferences and the NCAA pay schools with money from sponsorships, TV contacts, etc.
- Schools are willing to spend some money on sports because it brings exposure to schools. For example, I'd be willing to bet that Butler's applicant pool is much larger next year due to their recent success in the NCAA tournament.
EDIT: It would be very hard to shift funding from sports to academics because it's a cultural thing now. People are much more readily accepting of spending x million dollars to build a new stadium than to build a new research facility.
Citation or definitions needed.
For example, while Stanford is elite in some ways, it isn't a sports school. However, its "big athletic programs" (football, basketball, baseball, and possibly tennis) are more than self-supporting via directed donations and tickets.
The profits are used to fund less lucrative sports.
Yes, including the newish football stadium.
Your perception is almost entirely wrong.
And yes, that includes the new football stadium and the newish tennis stadium.
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/college_sports_a_m...
Do you have sources for the belief that sports pay for themselves?
Sadly, you're probably right about this. Sports seem to have become so ingrained in the popular paradigm of what you do at a university that it would be impossible to change. Oh well.
Really? It appears to me anecdotally that the run-up in tuition has been accompanied by a run-up in university building programs. My alma mater, a large state-related research school with a big sports program, is nearly unrecognizable ten years after I graduated, with a new IS building, a new science building, a new business school building, and a new law school building.
The university did charge an athletic fee. This was to cover the publicly accessible tennis courts, basketball courts, football, baseball, and soccer fields. They also provide buses for the intramural teams. And part of it went to subsidize student football tickets to the nationally ranked football team, played in a stadium the football boosters paid for.
I've watched the college next door to me transform from a small community college to a full fledged university. And they got there by having a serious athletic program.
Harvard doesn't have a funding problem. Many universities do right now, though, including nearly all public schools due to the state budget crunch.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/9109/Harvard-Number-One-Universit...
so it may be that even in the Ivy League, which is on top of just a few sports, the sports generate more applicant interest in the universities, and thus help them recruit stronger (both physically and mentally) students.