Given that college sports mostly loose money for schools[1], why do we think its OK to ask students and (for public colleges) taxpayers to subsidize professional sports' feeder system?
I went to a large state school (SUNY Buffalo) where the administration wanted to go division 1 when I was there in the early 90s. Transitioning to division 1 came along with a large (to us) mandatory athletic fee. The student body voted against this multiple times, and then the administration simply stopped asking and went division 1 anyway (and imposed the fee).
So in-state tuition at UB would be around $4850 instead of $5200 without sports. Out-of-state would be around $13,750 vs $14,100.
Would life be significantly better without sports at UB, if students were given back a few hundred dollars? Would alumni donations go down without the occasional March Madness appearance? Or Bulls games?
When people make this argument, they make it seem like schools would all of a sudden be able to afford a massively better educational experience. That's just not the case.
Speaking from experience, the administration's disregard for the wishes of the student body pissed me off enough that I didn't donate anything to them for 15 years or so after graduation (until William Greiner, the president who presided over this had retired). Others in my peer group felt the same way, and I imagine did the same thing.
In terms of the impact of the fee: When I went to school, the tuition was $675/semester, and the fee was over $100 (I don't recall if that was per semester or per year). So that was at least a 7% increase in cost. Its sad the tuition has gone up so much.
It sounds like life would be significantly better without sports. 5200 vs 4850 is $350. That is the difference of a month of rent in Buffalo for your room, snow tires on your car that year or not, text books or not.
So around 24 hours of 15$/h minimum wage labour so that someone else can do something they could be doing on their own dime... That sounds very excessive burden to be placed on students. For something they gain very little from...
I went to a large state school (SUNY Buffalo) where the administration wanted to go division 1 when I was there in the early 90s. Transitioning to division 1 came along with a large (to us) mandatory athletic fee. The student body voted against this multiple times, and then the administration simply stopped asking and went division 1 anyway (and imposed the fee).
[1]:https://www.bestcolleges.com/blog/do-college-sports-make-mon...