(04-09-2014 02:10 PM)bullet Wrote:  All those stadiums (or improvements) were financed the same way Liberty's was.

Some of them were primarily or entirely funded by ticket revenues, media income and donations, many were funded in large part through mandatory student fees.

So speaking in sweeping general terms doesn't really get anywhere. You need to know what share of the school's capital expenditure budget for athletics comes from tuitions, and then 85% of that fraction would be financed by federal financial aid ... since the education costs themselves consume all of direct federal grants in aid and more, that would portion would come from allowing students to go much deeper into debt through guaranteed student loans than if they were borrowing on their own account.

Whatever share that would be would be more like a long con than a federal subsidy ... the athletics department gives the impression to students that they are taking online courses from a real university, and so helps convince more of them to go deeper into debt for their education than they would be if they thought they were getting a cookie cutter online degree mill degree.

But given Liberty's original background, its entirely possible that private gifts cover that capital spending, in which case its more the economics of finding an impressive TV evangalist church, except for sports, with the contributing audience at home being the target. And if the contributors genuinely believe in the wickedness of most US higher education for not having a curriculum influenced by right wing evangelical theocratic, that aspect of the fund-raising might not be a con at all.