I agree about colleges should be on the hook for forgiveness and should pay in a surtax. I was in a tiny dorm, (although Trumps kids were there in a huuuge room) I am also against sports stadiums and such being paid for by tax payers, be it NFL or college sports
Thankfully Ivy League is not where sports money is being funneled, It’s really state schools Most highest paid state employees are… football coaches!
It’s not a new realization. Here’s a very old perspective on government bloat. You can tell by the language.
the state bureaucrat — one of the ominous symptoms of the disease that is eating at the vitals of those societies in North America and Western Europe which have escaped the ravages of communism. This disease may properly be called bureaucratic blight.
To listen to the hosannas from “liberal” circles whenever some new government appropriation takes billions of dollars out of the pockets of private taxpayers for some new state project employing thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of government functionaries, it might be imagined that a welfare state, run by bureaucrats, was the last word in human happiness and well-being. But the lessons of history point clearly in an opposite direction. The proliferation of bureaucrats and its invariable accompaniment, much heavier tax levies on the productive part of the population, are the recognizable signs, not of a great, but of a decaying society.
Historians know that both phenomena were especially marked in the declining eras of the Roman Empire in the West and of its successor state, the Eastern or Byzantine Empire. Bureaucrats are an expensive breed, in two ways. They are maintained at public expense and they are uncommonly fertile in thinking up schemes to spend more public funds and multiply their number.
This is off-topic, but dont overlook the fact that often the football coach is responsible for the revenue that subsudizes the entire rest of the athletic department, and sometimes even more non-sport campus programs beyond that. College football is a huge net-gain for virtually all schools, regardless of how much the football coach may get paid.
not if you factor in the infrastructure costs, that are borne by… you guessed it the tax payers and students (who’re on loans!)
Happen to live in a state that has a huge state football program. There is a reason why most of the big programs are state funded programs.
And @xerty rightfully brought up the matter of bloat in college. I’d much rather have colleges be academically focused, similar to community college. There was a huge outroar here when a community college suspended the football program .The board was right but the public hated it. Give the people what they want?
Do you have reliable, long term numbers on this? I can understand that Title IX probably sucked a sucked a little money, but many Div I teams make a ton of money, just from the TV revenue.
Definitely not. It was one of Rush’s mantras for 30 years, and he had current issues of the day to which he applied it.
If you had an idea of how big my family was, you wouldn’t be certain that was a joke. 
A modest proposal for some accountability
bring back bankruptcy for student debt for those who cannot repay their loans after several years of good-faith efforts and require that colleges repay half of their students’ discharged debt.
Nearly every college in the country accepts federal money, and if they wish to continue receiving this funding, colleges should be willing to assist in cleaning up the mess that so many of them helped create.
I’ve heard that so many times over the years. I used to believe it and repeat it like it was some sort of useful thing. But there are so many other factors that it essentially has become a trope. First off, no one has ever explained to me why varsity college sports that aren’t self-sustaining should even exist. Secondly, college football is only able to raise so much money because it is essentially the minor leagues for the NFL and players get paid with scholarships.
There is no educational benefit for students to have top notch sports programs, with the largest one (football) acting as a defacto training camp for one of the most successful and profitable industries in the country - which offers professional opportunities to less than 2% of their players.
If we could wave a magic wand an abolish every single college varsity sports program in existence tomorrow. The only thing we would lose is a bunch of entertainment on saturday. That would eventually be replaced by Minor League Football, and they would likely lease out the 100 largest college stadiums. We would gain tons of money back into the pockets of people throwing it away into college sports donations (this makes so little sense to me, my head would explode I was able to explain it to someone in sub-Saharan Africa) some of which would hopefully go back to the school in the form of donations for academic and research purposes. And we would stop acting like it makes sense to give free tuition out to people that can throw/kick/run/swim better than someone else with a better gpa and sat score. I can’t even name all the benefits of abolishing college sports easily, but there are probably dozens more.
And I actually watch my university’s sports teams (2 of them) and get enjoyment out of it. But if they disappeared tomorrow, it wouldn’t diminish the enjoyment of my life anywhere near as much as it would help the future enjoyment of the lives of the future students at the school that would benefit from an educational institution that doesn’t focus so much on sports that $30 million in donations is coming in annually to the sports teams.
I didnt say it makes sense, just that this is how it is.
But tons of the other 98% get fully funded scholarships, where they are in fact [supposed to be] receiving an education as well. College sports, especially football, is more like a scholarship fund that takes nothing away from the school’s academics.
Lots of college students would lose their scholarships and be stuck with more debt that we’ll eventually be expected to forgive. And no, there wouldnt be Minor League football leasing out a hundred large stadiums. Most college stadiums would be demolished/mothballed without college athletics.
People would get their money back, but that money wont go to the school instead, it’ll be thrown away into whatever whim those donors decide to turn their interests towards instead. It’d be a net loss to the schools. If you think the money given to the football program will instead be redirected to the math department or be used to build a new chemistry building, you are sorely mistaken.
The arguments you make have nothing to do with college sports, they all can be applied to the existence of any and all professional and amatuer sports. But for now, as long as sports exist, there’s no reason colleges shouldnt capitalize on their popularity.
Lots of college students would lose their scholarships and be stuck with more debt that we’ll eventually be expected to forgive. And no, there wouldnt be Minor League football leasing out a hundred large stadiums. Most college stadiums would be demolished/mothballed without college athletics.
While I agree with Meed’s general “meh” attitude about the value of college-level football programs – I definitely agree with you here, that no comparable minor league market would be anywhere near as commercially valuable.
I think that reality is pretty clearly seen with other minor league sports, compared to their major league counterparts. Love it or hate it, college football is an absolutely massive commercial endeavor, but that is by association with the college branding that gets people who otherwise couldn’t give a crap about the sport to pay attention.
I’ve never given two craps about college sports. But while I dont give it any value, they arent taking away value either. At worst the effect is a wash - because regardless of how much that football coach is being paid, that money wouldnt be available if not for the football program generating it.
There aren’t an unlimited number of slots in college. A large number of that 98%, if their sports abilities weren’t factored in, would have probably attended a lower tier school. If that were the case, their spot would be opened up to a student with more deserving academic achievements.
Yes they would. There are 120 minor league baseball teams in the USA and Canada. There is clearly a demand for minor league football, its just done by colleges and universities right now.
So?
That’s fine too. Still a better use than donating it to sports programs that don’t need it. Imagine the outcry if the Oakland Athletics sent their season ticket holders requests for extra money beyond the market value of their seats. Yet that’s exactly what every college sports (football) program around the country does and no one thinks its absurd.
How?
Then all those sports donors don’t actually care about the school. So what use are they then? It’s not like their sports donations help the academic side at all.
How? People don’t donate money to professional sports teams. Someone who isn’t interested in sports that goes to college doesn’t benefit if the swim team does well. If there is some sort of revenue sharing agreement with the football team whereby the money they get for their bowl win and a percentage of their ticket sales and donations goes to the school to be used on things besides athletics, then I can see how football teams can be beneficial. If that is the case, then yes, paying semi-pro athletes by giving them kinesiology degrees is actually a boon for the rest of the student body. I honestly don’t know if that is how big football schools operate with their football revenue but I assume it’s more like you originally described - the football team doesn’t pay the school, they subsidize the gymnastics team (and all the other sports besides basketball).
My opposition was to the implication that schools use student tuition or state money to pay the football coach’s inflated salary. That salary is paid for by the money brought in by the football program. The football scholarships are paid for by the money brought in by the football program. Etc, etc. The money spent on football couldnt be used instead to build a new academic building or hire more professors, because without football that money doesnt exist. So, what’s the harm? At worst it’s a wash, at best it brings in additional funds that the school can use elsewhere.
Agree 100%. I should have stipulated early on that even though the comment about the football coach’s salary started this whole thing, football itself is almost never a net loser for a university when it comes to dollars in vs the cost of the football program specifically - with a huge caveat regarding NEW stadium construction.
I was referring to varsity college sports as a whole. The justification that the football program covers a bunch of revenue negative sports has always bothered me. Why should it? Who cares if colleges have rowing teams?
This is what I am talking about. Obviously you can’t use all the money for academic purposes, but you could use the money going to the soccer team’s scholarships to instead pay for scholarships for kids who got in to college based on their academic performance.
I personally think the harm is in the booster club. Why is the Hokie/Irish/Tiger/Gamecock Club out there collecting millions of dollars? The football team doesn’t need it - they make money. Yet the schools with the best football teams (the ones making the most from bowl games, ticket sales, TV rights) bring in the most money to their booster club. It doesn’t make sense if the point of the booster club is to support the sports that don’t make money.
We’re out here charging kids going to state schools $20k a year for tuition and for some reason we have people collecting money with the university’s name that only goes towards athletes, athletic buildings, and other sports expenses (like coaches and trainers) that the average student will never benefit from unless he likes watching lacrosse. If the goal of a university is to educate kids, then do that and let the students have fun on club teams with their own money that they kick in or raise themselves. If the goal is to educate kids and run a miniature olympic academy, then explain to me, as a taxpayer supporting your institution either directly if its a state school, or indirectly through loans if it is private, how having 12 different money losing varsity sports teams where the kids on them are spending less time on their education than they otherwise would is a good use of taxpayer funds.
Well said. I only singled out football since the numbers are really high, it’s really all college sports subsidies/fees
Similar to taxes, I didn’t have a choice to NOT pay high athletic fees, even though I had ZERO interest in watching games. My loans paid for that. Ivy League was a lot lower/non existent compared to the state school, although it might have been the 15 year difference
This is another key difference b/t American and say European/Asian colleges. They’re academically focused , no huge stadiums etc.
While I understand and could agree with either side of this argument, I will take exception to the above. I’m pretty sure that you’ve been to minor league baseball games. I’ve been to dozens, and in no way do they resemble a college football game - not in size, not in excitement, not in revenue, not in fan involvement, not in media coverage, not in fan firmness/depth.
I will allow for the fact that without college football, it might be easier for an owner of a minor league football team to generate revenue, but the current minor league football teams are not profitable at all.
I’m shocked that there were “high athletic fees” at any Ivy league schools. Regardless of the amount, they overcharged.
I’m shocked that there were “high athletic fees” at any Ivy league schools. Regardless of the amount, they overcharged.
Hey now, rowing, fencing, and polo are expensive sports! 
Meanwhile
Explain to me again why this isn’t being funded by a tax on endowments, in proportion to the unpaid balance for each college/university?
The real winners out of all of this are the colleges and universities. They get to continue to charge whatever they want, ignoring inflation, without any track record of degrees leading to good paying jobs, and the feds will issue loans for it.