Comment by valval | Hacker News Reader

Comment by valval | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

In the EU, universities rarely have sports leagues you’re right in that, but all universities have various kinds of organised clubs and events all the damn time — not a week goes past without a lot of extra-curricular activities, of course voluntary.

I have no idea how they handle things in say China, but at least here it’s quite obvious that the point of university is more or less to prepare students for life in general rather than just get educated. Education is of course the grand goal and at least here in Finland universities get some significant amount of money from the government for each graduating student, but your first sentence is still dishonest argumentation at best.

Besides, the GP is talking total nonsense in general. Everyone I know outside the US looks up to your college sports scene in admiration since it looks like an awful lot of fulfilment and fun on top of studies and produces a massive amount of successful athletes in all kinds of sports. We’re envious of it, nothing more. Your country is and has been home to the most innovations and set a positive example to the rest of the world for decades and decades now, and frankly saying otherwise is just silly.

There are university leagues for every kind of sport in the UK. Most of the people involved take it very seriously but it's still just a form of recreation and doesn't attract crowds and money. I've never spoken with anyone who admires or envies the US system. If it came up in conversation I suppose most would find it utterly bizarre and likely to corrupt the purpose of a university, as I do.

> In the EU, universities rarely have sports leagues you’re right in that, but all universities have various kinds of organised clubs

I don't think that's true? It's just that they're not a huge public thing, televised, random locals watching live, with people attending the 'college' purely to play for the team, studying as a technicality. The only people involved, generally, are those playing (self-organised).

I played ice hockey in the UK university league (which was at the time in the EU, but I'm not nitpicking that point) and the team occasionally travelled abroad (I went to Eindhoven, NL) to play other university teams in Europe. (And get absolutely thrashed: hockey's bigger in much of Europe, especially colder countries, than it is in the UK, so they were the cream of a big pool of talent, while we were ..scraping a team together from interested parties is only slightly an exaggeration.)

Once upon a time, I was pretty involved with Finnish student organizations. It's more accurate to say that Finnish universities don't have that many organized clubs. It's the students who have them. Students often have a lot of free time, and they get involved in all kinds of activities. Their clubs tend to be independent legal entities with minimal formal connections to the university. Some of the more successful ones I knew often had some trouble maintaining >50% students in their membership in order to qualify for various benefits from the student union.

Second, according to Finnish law,

> The mission of the universities is to promote independent academic research as well as academic and artistic education, to provide research-based higher education and to educate students to serve their country and humanity at large.

It has been argued that getting involved in volunteer activities is part of the education. Participating in college sports would qualify, while watching them and supporting your team would not.

> Besides, the GP is talking total nonsense in general.

I know what I am saying. The whole point is spiraling costs and tragedy of the commons. Colleges and universities must keep spending on spectator sports because otherwise you can’t pull students away from other colleges and universities that do the same. The whole point of my comment is to make college accessible and affordable. You can’t just say “don’t look up”. Something has to change.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com