(03-30-2017 09:11 AM)MplsBison Wrote: (03-30-2017 08:57 AM)quo vadis Wrote: Both obviously have a vested interest in the university thinking that subsidized athletics is "worth it".
The university has a vested interest in its departments, by definition.
(03-30-2017 08:57 AM)quo vadis Wrote: that is just your opinion, and it strikes me as a shallow one
Thinking that a school should cut its athletic dept if it can't operate without a subsidy is just an opinion, and IMO a shallow one. And, none of them agree with you. They agree with me, apparently.
(03-30-2017 08:57 AM)quo vadis Wrote: We could ask alumni, or the whole university community: On a 1-10 scale, how much of an increase in "alumni pride" is worth how many tangible dollars taken from the wallets of students?
The students vote for increases upon themselves. Not taken, that is false.
1) Is nonsensical. You said "athletic depts" disagree with me. Of course they do, as their existence is on the line.
2) Subsidies take many forms - direct student fees, distribution of centralized university funds, etc.. And the funding mechanisms vary. In some cases, students do vote for fees to subsidize athletics. But not always:
"Battles over fees have triggered campus-wide referenda. In 2008, at California State University, Fresno, students voted against an increase from $7 to $50 per semester; the university president overrode that result and upped the fee to subsidize athletics to $32 per semester. At Utah State University, about 53 percent of students voting approved a 100 percent increase from $113 to $243 annually to help lift the university’s athletics department out of debt. In 2009, students at the University of New Orleans, a non-football-playing Division I institution, soundly rejected a doubling of student fees for athletics from about $200 per year to nearly $400."
And regarding first principles:
Even in those cases where students vote to subsidize excessive athletic spending, such as at Utah State above, that's merely less onerous than cases where the administration does it without student approval, but it doesn't absolve the subsidy from condemnation. It's wrong for a majority of students to compel a minority of students to pay athletic fees, so the only truly moral and valid kind of subsidy would be where the individual student decides to voluntarily pay such a fee, e.g., when paying their registration, they check a box indicating they will pay $100 more or whatever to go to the athletic department.
Everything else is tainted with mission corruption.