<p>for god's sakes, is it really worth having billion dollar budgets for promoting "athleticism and campus culture"? i would rather have tuition lowered than have a top notch football team associated with my school</p>
<p>Not gonna happen. Your tuition won’t get lowered if sports were to get cut. Your arguement is therefore pointless.</p>
<p>I do think that facilities and academics should have first priority for funds over athletics.</p>
<p>Do you realize how much revenue goes back to a university through major sports programs?</p>
<p>So…
What does that have to do with anything.
I’m with the cutting sports funding. I come from a small high school where
sports are everything :(</p>
<p>I have college friends that say their school can be the same way and isn’t college supposed
to be about your education and growing up and making something out of your life
how can you do that if the college you’re attending main focus is sports and not acedemics…</p>
<p>just a thought.</p>
<p>be quiet, some people put just as much work into there sports as you do into your academics.</p>
<p>And what are their sports doing for us? I can’t recall the last time a home run cured a disease.</p>
<p>If you get rid of sports programs, then maybe the fitness center, music ensembles, clubs, etc. should be cut too. There are schools without big time sports programs, so people can choose to attend those. There are also online colleges so you can avoid all “unnecessary programs” that way.</p>
<p>What’s important to one person may not be important to another. That’s the beauty of the world. </p>
<p>I do agree that some coaches are overpaid and some sports programs have too much $. However, there’s a lot of value in sports, and I feel they should not be cut out. </p>
<p>By the way, there are lots of college sports programs that have fallen by the wayside because of budget cuts. Rutgers recently got rid of fencing, rowing and, I believe, swimming.</p>
<p>UF has its sports funding separate.</p>
<p>
I can’t remember the last time Art History, Hotel Management or like 30 other majors cured a disease, so why not cut them too, right? (being sarcastic btw :P)</p>
<p>I think sports are important - they raise a lot of money for many colleges, they contribute to school spirit and pride, they encourage being physically fit which is what we need in America, and like many activities, they teach the values of hard work, teamwork, sportsmanship, blahblah…so obviously a lot of good stuff there</p>
<p>on the other hand, universities exist so people can learn and get degrees, so I do think education is a priority. But I doubt cutting sports would decrease tuition at all, so I disagree with the OP…but it might depend on how the budget works at the individual college, so its hard to say.</p>
<p>I agree on your last point Alix. I’m not saying cut sports. I’m just saying that education should be first in line for funds.</p>
<p>
Can you give us some numbers?</p>
<p>There was a big debate about funding athletics at Berkeley recently. The faculty passed a resolution asking the university to make athletics self-supporting again. The only sports that was making a profit were football and basketball, but those profits are not enough to cover the losses of the other sports. The university has to contribute a two-digit million dollar sum a year to the operating costs of the athletic department, and cover extraordinary expenses (e.g. gym renovations). </p>
<p>How many universities are actually making a profit from their sports program?</p>
<p>To add to my previous post, here is a link to the athletics resolution passed by the Academic Senate at Berkeley. It is very explicit about the cost of and revenue generated by their athletic department. (Scroll down to “4:45 pm”)</p>
<p>[Berkeley</a> Division of the Academic Senate || MINUTES OF MEETING](<a href=“http://academic-senate.berkeley.edu/meetings/documents/Division_Notice_11-5-09_final.pdf]Berkeley”>http://academic-senate.berkeley.edu/meetings/documents/Division_Notice_11-5-09_final.pdf)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Not many. But how many universities make a profit on many of their other programs?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Actually, for most universities, not much. Big U’s, yes it evens out. Smaller Us it costs the school oodles of money.</p>
<p>If we’re talking about cutting stuff that’s supposedly useless, then get rid of half the humanities department as well.</p>
<p>Christ, are you really comparing the utility of philosophy and social sciences to football? Football’s great, it’s fun to watch and I recognize that it takes a lot of dedication to make it big in college football. But the works of Voltaire and Plato have done far more for society than Michael Vick ever has.</p>
<p>DC, I can’t believe you actually responded :(. There is a major hate on humanities here, you know that, we normally just let it go lol.</p>
<p>All Vick has done is torture animals. That is all he will be remembered for. Interesting example though.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>What school do you go to?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>NCAA sports are actual sports, not studies of sports. A better comparison would be the social/economic impact of say Michael Jordan with that of a Creative Writing major at UNC. Not that I have anything against the humanities…</p>
<p>TCBH, comparing one of the most influential superstars of this century to random student X at a university is not a fair comparison at all. A better comparison would be FDR to MJ. FDR also studied law (a humanities subject).</p>