Are big-time college athletics lost sight of their educational mission?

College Search & Selection
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<p>From the latest Chronicle of Higher Education 5/29/09</p>

<p>Commercialization in College Sports May Have 'Crossed the Line,' Report Says</p>

<p>Big-time college sports programs derive 60 percent to 80 percent of their revenue from commercial sources, suggesting that intercollegiate athletics — at least at the elite levels — may have "crossed the line" from an educational to a commercial endeavor.</p>

<p>That finding comes from a report, "Tax Preferences for Collegiate Sports," released last week by the Congressional Budget Office. The office, a nonpartisan research arm of Congress, questioned whether the rise in such commercial ventures should lead big athletics programs to lose their tax-exempt status.</p>

<p>The report offers no position, but it says removing the current tax incentives would do little to bring in additional revenue to the U.S. Treasury and would probably not alter the growing commercial activities in college sports.</p>

<p>The NCAA has long argued that athletics departments are no different from other university programs that secure corporate deals to finance their operations. But the report found that athletics programs bring in a far greater proportion of their revenue from commercial sources than do colleges on the whole. Over all, colleges derive just 11 percent to 14 percent of their revenue from corporate deals.</p>

<p>The report, requested two years ago by Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, covers little new ground and left several observers scratching their heads.</p>

<p>"They ignored the basic principle that nonprofit organizations are granted their special nonprofit status by the IRS to further their mission, which in the case of universities and colleges is exclusively educational," said Nathan Tublitz, a professor of biology at the University of Oregon and co-chair of the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics, a faculty-led reform group. He believes the report provides strong evidence that intercollegiate athletics programs are primarily a commercial enterprise and are moving away from their educational mission.</p>

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<p>Was athletics ever meant to be part of a larger “educational mission”…?</p>

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<p>I think they are bound by the tax code as part of a non-profit university with an educational mission. I am not an expert on the tax code. My reaction to the above, however, was “Duh, Division I athletics lost sight of its educational mission long ago.”</p>

<p>Tax issues are just one aspect. Big time college sports has always been about making money. So much for their “mission” and and the “principles” on which the universities were founded.</p>

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<p>Participating in intercollegiate sports is extremely educational; probably moreso than many academic courses offered at some of these colleges.</p>

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<p>I agree that participating in sports in general is extremely beneficial, however DI athletics has indeed become overly commercialized.</p>

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<p>I really don’t see what the problem here is. Colleges don’t exist for the sole purpose of book-learning.</p>