my daughter went to college, i was not happy with student fee's
they showed what they cover & made some sence especially if she took advantage of programs
6 yrs latter she works in Tex, sun morning in the fall, she calls & we talk BGSU FB
took me to a bowl game. it was worth every penny

(04-09-2018 03:22 AM)templefootballfan Wrote:  my daughter went to college, i was not happy with student fee's
they showed what they cover & made some sence especially if she took advantage of programs
6 yrs latter she works in Tex, sun morning in the fall, she calls & we talk BGSU FB
took me to a bowl game. it was worth every penny

Good for you. Love the BG(/Toledo) trip. Hopefully better days are ahead with Maryland coming to town.

Institutions which aren't self sufficient should scale back spending or drop to a more reasonable division instead of spending millions of dollars of student money to lose in the first round of the NCAA tournament or play in the Frisco Bowl in a good year.

(04-08-2018 03:35 PM)GoldenWarrior11 Wrote:  

(04-08-2018 03:06 PM)CliftonAve Wrote:  Our students get tickets to FB and basketball with those fees, plus a rec center that has been voted one of the best in the country. It’s not that bad of a deal. Obviously since we keep bringing in record new students every year for the past 8-10 years most students aren’t that upset about it.

But there are enough upset about it for a story to be published in the student newspaper, along with quotes from unhappy students.

UC has 45,000 students and ~11,000 faculty and administrative staff. The number that have a problem with it is very small when you look at the numbers as a whole.

There is no option to "go somewhere else." Virtually every college and university charges student fees and those fees include some athletics fees.

You can't compare student fees and tuition. Tuition is a relatively small percentage of a schools budget. My guestimate is around 25%. I'm not naive enough to think that money doesn't go in one big account. However, there are rules and laws regarding what tuition can be used for. Schools have to be able to demonstrate that through their accounting system. If tuition is supposed to be used for teacher salaries and a school collects $10 in tuition but only spends $8, they better be able to account for the other $2.

You can't compare college to public school either. Where I live, the country provides basic facilities. When my nephews team wanted to add a batting cage they had to get permission from the county, provide all the funds, and demonstrate they could maintain it. The county also has to be reimbursed for some or all of the cost of travel to away games, food, lodging, security, refs, etc. That money comes from parents, boosters, donors and advertisers.

Using student fees to defray all or some of the cost of things that the student has access to is fine. Using fees for intramural fields and student tickets is fine. Using fees to pay a coaches salary or to pay for upgrades to the mens basketball locker room is wrong.

We're not talking about a few thousand dollars. Some schools are using student fees and/or school funds as 75%, or more, of their athletic budget. That is wrong.

(04-08-2018 04:57 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(04-08-2018 04:13 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(04-08-2018 03:00 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(04-08-2018 02:52 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(04-08-2018 11:37 AM)Ohio Poly Wrote:  No one is forced to attend UC or any AAC school. So the fees are optional for all AAC students and they are opting in at a rate of 100%.

That is a strange way to look at it, because the student should not have his or her valid educational program options held hostage to a dumb athletic fee.

There are very few if any services that are not held "hostage" to some fee or built-in cost that the buyer may or may not prefer be there. If you consider sales taxes, virtually every transaction by definition is subsizing other programs that the buyer may not ever use or even support.

College is not different from the primary public education systems across the nation. Millions of dollars are spent on athletics in every school district---even though most middle and high schools students will never play a single sport. Those that have interests in the sciences still subsidize band, cheerleading, wresting, choir, and theatre, ect. Nothing new here.

Huh? High school kids don't pay a fee to fund the football or basketball teams. That funding comes from the school district. So the athletic fees at college are totally different.

Second, in high school, the regular students aren't paying fees to fund "scholarships" for the athletes. They aren't being asked to pay for their own tuition, PLUS pay a fee on top to help defray the cost of an athlete's tuition. Think about how dumb and unfair that is.

If college students are paying a fee to fund intramural athletics on campus, that is appropriate, as it provides a recreational benefit every student can participate in if they want to. Of course, those fees are nothing compared to the fees charged to fund the school's intercollegiate sports teams.

What do you mean. huh? High school students dont pay a fee period. They do pay taxes that support both the academic and athletic parts of the school district. Furthermore, those that attend private schools pay for the athletic programs as part of their tuition (as well as taxes to support a public school district they dont attend at all---talk about unfair). Bottom line---The cost of maintaining and running a modern primary public school district includes a cost for athletics. That money is not going to academics---which I assume is your argument at the university level. As far as college goes---If mandatory, the athletic fees are simply part of the cost of attendance---no different than building use fees.

My point is---we accept athletic spending that is not self supporting at the local school district level. Not sure why there should be an expectation that programs that are not self sustaining at the HS level will be at the college level.

-------------------

The reality is----if this issue is a priority with the student---the decision to attend a school with low or no athletic fee is completely and totally within their control.

First, there's a huge quantitative difference between HS students, whose "fees" for athletics takes the form of the taxes their parents pay, and the taxes everyone else in the school district pays even if they have no kids in school, and the specific tacked-on fees that we are talking about for G5 and FCS schools. The former are tiny and diffuse, probably pennies per student per year, the latter, significant.

E.g., in my district here in Baton Rouge, I pay about $150 a year in property taxes that go to fund public schools. That's for funding the entirety of the public school system, all aspects of it. The fraction of this that goes to buy uniforms for football players is probably a dollar or two at most. Contrast that with the hundreds of dollars a semester students at some colleges pay.

Second, there's a major qualitative difference as well. At colleges, regular students are soaked to actually fund the attendance of the athletes. E.g., at UConn, a student pays for their own tuition and books, and then is socked with a fee to help pay for an athlete's tuition and books. So regular students are incurring extra costs and debt to pay for free rides for other students. That doesn't happen in middle school.

Third, the "choice" argument is disingenuous, because it forces a student to make choices they shouldn't have to. A Houston or USF student who thinks their business or engineering program is the best fit for them shouldn't have to choose between that and paying an athletic fee, because athletics isn't a proper part of the mission of a university. It's a false-choice situation. Bad.

As for the comments about "self-sustaining": This is a damning indictment. At public grade and high schools, athletics is touted as fun, recreation activity for students, part of the Platonic ideal of developing mind and body. At colleges, intercollegiate athletics is supposed to BRING IN money. It's touted as an investment that pays off in marketing and other benefits for the university. Truth is, of course, at 90% of all FCS and FBS schools, it obviously costs way more than it brings in, which is why fees are needed. The claims about "front porch" and the like don't pan out, if they did, no fees would be needed.

I am happy to find out that USF's athletic fee is relatively low compared to some other G5 schools, but until it is down to zero, it's a bad thing.

Online degree programs and community colleges are a couple of alternatives.

(04-09-2018 07:09 AM)Go College Sports Wrote:  Institutions which aren't self sufficient should scale back spending or drop to a more reasonable division instead of spending millions of dollars of student money to lose in the first round of the NCAA tournament or play in the Frisco Bowl in a good year.

So Kanasas State long ago should have scaled back their athletic spending or joined a more financially compatible conference or division?

They are eliminating their student athletic fee. But would they have ever been able to build their athletic department to the point it could operate at a high level without a fee had they not been transferring funds and charging a fee?
http://www.kctv5.com/story/37898492/kans...tudent-fee

In Arkansas, UA pulled money in from the university for decades. They used the WPA and Federal money for armories to build their first serious football stadium and basketball gym. The taxpayers paid for every inch of land their newer "paid for by private money" facilities are on and the taxpayers paid for connecting roads and utilities.

When the state legislature wanted to crack down on all the schools getting too big for their britches they ended up amending the law on how much could be transferred to support athletics to insure that UA didn't have to cut its athletic budget. Net result of the change was AState moved FCS to FBS in order to access more revenue while the state schools playing NAIA ended up moving to NCAA Division II to get a better financial deal. We lost several juco athletic departments in the process.

I find most people who don't want any fees or transfers tend to be fans of schools that built their programs on the backs of transfers and fees and eventually reached a point where they didn't need those but expect other schools to do the same in less time than their favorite team did.

I'm 100% for financial responsibility. I think when a program isn't able to self-fund from fan support even 25% of the athletic program they need to take an incredibly hard look at their budget as well as their aspirations. Even at a 50-50 split there needs to be some soul searching over whether the spending being done is likely to provide a future return that will permit less financial dependence.

But I'm really sick of the School X doesn't need any added money argument when School X subsidized athletics for more than a century.

(04-09-2018 08:47 AM)arkstfan Wrote:  In Arkansas, UA pulled money in from the university for decades. They used the WPA and Federal money for armories to build their first serious football stadium and basketball gym. The taxpayers paid for every inch of land their newer "paid for by private money" facilities are on and the taxpayers paid for connecting roads and utilities.

----

I find most people who don't want any fees or transfers tend to be fans of schools that built their programs on the backs of transfers and fees and eventually reached a point where they didn't need those but expect other schools to do the same in less time than their favorite team did.

I think you conflate two things here. Schools like Kansas State and Arkansas State are public schools, so it's normal for them to be supported by taxpayers.

That's different from soaking their own students with fees and transfers to fund the athletic aspirations of their administrators.

I agree that one can view such fees/transfers as an investment. If it results in a P5 bid, which then generates a gusher of money that can then be used to fund academics, the investment can be said to have paid off.

But for far too many schools, there is no realistic path to self-funding athletic status, so it's obviously just throwing money down a black hole.

At USF, we are playing that game - hitting our students with fees to keep our athletics at a level where we could possibly be attractive to a power conference. But logically and morally, this can't go on forever. At a certain point, you have to admit that the gamble/investment failed, and have to stop throwing good money after bad, which in our case would mean scaling back athletics to a self-sustainable level.

The NCAA makes a big deal about athletes receiving impermissable benefits from boosters, agents, shoe companies and the like. Even penalizes their schools by vacating wins and titles.

But they turn a blind eye when the school provides lavish benefits like plush locker rooms, exclusive lounges, weight rooms, bowling alleys, laser tag arenas, and who knows what other perks available only to athletes and denied to regular students. It's perfectly OK to the NCAA that schools require those regular students to pay out of their own pockets for the farcical "permissable" luxuries that the athletes who receive them don't pay a penny for.

And why wouldn't they? Their members consider athletes to be more important to the university than regular students. And more important than faculty. They are indeed the "front porch" to the university. Why else would students go there if not to bask in the reflected glory of their gridiron heroes?

(04-09-2018 10:15 AM)ken d Wrote:  The NCAA makes a big deal about athletes receiving impermissable benefits from boosters, agents, shoe companies and the like. Even penalizes their schools by vacating wins and titles.

But they turn a blind eye when the school provides lavish benefits like plush locker rooms, exclusive lounges, weight rooms, bowling alleys, laser tag arenas, and who knows what other perks available only to athletes and denied to regular students. It's perfectly OK to the NCAA that schools require those regular students to pay out of their own pockets for the farcical "permissable" luxuries that the athletes who receive them don't pay a penny for.

And why wouldn't they? Their members consider athletes to be more important to the university than regular students. And more important than faculty. They are indeed the "front porch" to the university. Why else would students go there if not to bask in the reflected glory of their gridiron heroes?

I think this is the real argument. Perhaps for the sake of parity there should be limits on these luxuries. I'd imagine it'd cut a lot of the subsidies. And for schools that truly are self-sufficient it'd mean that their financially viable athletics programs could actually help their academic end (like how about reducing tuition?).

how do olympic athletles fit in this, alot of them use schools to train, workout & compete

(04-09-2018 10:15 AM)ken d Wrote:  But they turn a blind eye when the school provides lavish benefits like plush locker rooms, exclusive lounges, weight rooms, bowling alleys, laser tag arenas, and who knows what other perks available only to athletes and denied to regular students.

How do you propose to regulate training facilities? You want to force every school to make athletes share weight rooms and treadmills with all students at the school? You want the NCAA to forbid a school from putting an HDTV at every player's locker (Texas)? You want them to outlaw a fancy ventilation system in the locker room (Oregon) that supposedly keeps the locker room from smelling like a locker room? It has to stink in there or the school gets put on probation?

(04-09-2018 08:38 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(04-08-2018 04:57 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(04-08-2018 04:13 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(04-08-2018 03:00 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(04-08-2018 02:52 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  That is a strange way to look at it, because the student should not have his or her valid educational program options held hostage to a dumb athletic fee.

There are very few if any services that are not held "hostage" to some fee or built-in cost that the buyer may or may not prefer be there. If you consider sales taxes, virtually every transaction by definition is subsizing other programs that the buyer may not ever use or even support.

College is not different from the primary public education systems across the nation. Millions of dollars are spent on athletics in every school district---even though most middle and high schools students will never play a single sport. Those that have interests in the sciences still subsidize band, cheerleading, wresting, choir, and theatre, ect. Nothing new here.

Huh? High school kids don't pay a fee to fund the football or basketball teams. That funding comes from the school district. So the athletic fees at college are totally different.

Second, in high school, the regular students aren't paying fees to fund "scholarships" for the athletes. They aren't being asked to pay for their own tuition, PLUS pay a fee on top to help defray the cost of an athlete's tuition. Think about how dumb and unfair that is.

If college students are paying a fee to fund intramural athletics on campus, that is appropriate, as it provides a recreational benefit every student can participate in if they want to. Of course, those fees are nothing compared to the fees charged to fund the school's intercollegiate sports teams.

What do you mean. huh? High school students dont pay a fee period. They do pay taxes that support both the academic and athletic parts of the school district. Furthermore, those that attend private schools pay for the athletic programs as part of their tuition (as well as taxes to support a public school district they dont attend at all---talk about unfair). Bottom line---The cost of maintaining and running a modern primary public school district includes a cost for athletics. That money is not going to academics---which I assume is your argument at the university level. As far as college goes---If mandatory, the athletic fees are simply part of the cost of attendance---no different than building use fees.

My point is---we accept athletic spending that is not self supporting at the local school district level. Not sure why there should be an expectation that programs that are not self sustaining at the HS level will be at the college level.

-------------------

The reality is----if this issue is a priority with the student---the decision to attend a school with low or no athletic fee is completely and totally within their control.

First, there's a huge quantitative difference between HS students, whose "fees" for athletics takes the form of the taxes their parents pay, and the taxes everyone else in the school district pays even if they have no kids in school, and the specific tacked-on fees that we are talking about for G5 and FCS schools. The former are tiny and diffuse, probably pennies per student per year, the latter, significant.

E.g., in my district here in Baton Rouge, I pay about $150 a year in property taxes that go to fund public schools. That's for funding the entirety of the public school system, all aspects of it. The fraction of this that goes to buy uniforms for football players is probably a dollar or two at most. Contrast that with the hundreds of dollars a semester students at some colleges pay.

Second, there's a major qualitative difference as well. At colleges, regular students are soaked to actually fund the attendance of the athletes. E.g., at UConn, a student pays for their own tuition and books, and then is socked with a fee to help pay for an athlete's tuition and books. So regular students are incurring extra costs and debt to pay for free rides for other students. That doesn't happen in middle school.

Third, the "choice" argument is disingenuous, because it forces a student to make choices they shouldn't have to. A Houston or USF student who thinks their business or engineering program is the best fit for them shouldn't have to choose between that and paying an athletic fee, because athletics isn't a proper part of the mission of a university. It's a false-choice situation. Bad.

As for the comments about "self-sustaining": This is a damning indictment. At public grade and high schools, athletics is touted as fun, recreation activity for students, part of the Platonic ideal of developing mind and body. At colleges, intercollegiate athletics is supposed to BRING IN money. It's touted as an investment that pays off in marketing and other benefits for the university. Truth is, of course, at 90% of all FCS and FBS schools, it obviously costs way more than it brings in, which is why fees are needed. The claims about "front porch" and the like don't pan out, if they did, no fees would be needed.

I am happy to find out that USF's athletic fee is relatively low compared to some other G5 schools, but until it is down to zero, it's a bad thing.

Gotta say---I'd be absolutely shocked if your able to run a local school district on $150 per household. I know my school property taxes are right around $2K and that doesnt include the big chunk of funding that the district gets from the state (about 40% of the budget comes from state sales taxes if I remember correctly). I suspect the tax bite to run your school district is bigger than you think--as is the pro-rata cost of athletics and non-academic functions at the municipal school district level. In terms of size, collegiate athletic budgets are about 2-3% of total spending and about half of those budgets are self funding---so really, only about 1-1.5% is actually being "spent" by the typical G5 university If I remember correctly, my area's school district spends about 2% on athletics---so very similar numbers.

(04-09-2018 10:15 AM)ken d Wrote:  The NCAA makes a big deal about athletes receiving impermissable benefits from boosters, agents, shoe companies and the like. Even penalizes their schools by vacating wins and titles.

But they turn a blind eye when the school provides lavish benefits like plush locker rooms, exclusive lounges, weight rooms, bowling alleys, laser tag arenas, and who knows what other perks available only to athletes and denied to regular students. It's perfectly OK to the NCAA that schools require those regular students to pay out of their own pockets for the farcical "permissable" luxuries that the athletes who receive them don't pay a penny for.

And why wouldn't they? Their members consider athletes to be more important to the university than regular students. And more important than faculty. They are indeed the "front porch" to the university. Why else would students go there if not to bask in the reflected glory of their gridiron heroes?

Transfers are more appropriately addressed by the regional accrediting bodies.

Realistically why would an athletic association delve into the funding side when roughly 1200+ of 1281 members transfer funds and/or use student fees?

The regional accrediting bodies are tasked with academic issues and if professors are being capped on how many copies they can make in order to produce tests while money is being diverted to athletics that's much more of an academic issue.

I'm impressed with how low ours is, actually.

(04-09-2018 11:29 AM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(04-09-2018 08:38 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(04-08-2018 04:57 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(04-08-2018 04:13 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(04-08-2018 03:00 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  There are very few if any services that are not held "hostage" to some fee or built-in cost that the buyer may or may not prefer be there. If you consider sales taxes, virtually every transaction by definition is subsizing other programs that the buyer may not ever use or even support.

College is not different from the primary public education systems across the nation. Millions of dollars are spent on athletics in every school district---even though most middle and high schools students will never play a single sport. Those that have interests in the sciences still subsidize band, cheerleading, wresting, choir, and theatre, ect. Nothing new here.

Huh? High school kids don't pay a fee to fund the football or basketball teams. That funding comes from the school district. So the athletic fees at college are totally different.

Second, in high school, the regular students aren't paying fees to fund "scholarships" for the athletes. They aren't being asked to pay for their own tuition, PLUS pay a fee on top to help defray the cost of an athlete's tuition. Think about how dumb and unfair that is.

If college students are paying a fee to fund intramural athletics on campus, that is appropriate, as it provides a recreational benefit every student can participate in if they want to. Of course, those fees are nothing compared to the fees charged to fund the school's intercollegiate sports teams.

What do you mean. huh? High school students dont pay a fee period. They do pay taxes that support both the academic and athletic parts of the school district. Furthermore, those that attend private schools pay for the athletic programs as part of their tuition (as well as taxes to support a public school district they dont attend at all---talk about unfair). Bottom line---The cost of maintaining and running a modern primary public school district includes a cost for athletics. That money is not going to academics---which I assume is your argument at the university level. As far as college goes---If mandatory, the athletic fees are simply part of the cost of attendance---no different than building use fees.

My point is---we accept athletic spending that is not self supporting at the local school district level. Not sure why there should be an expectation that programs that are not self sustaining at the HS level will be at the college level.

-------------------

The reality is----if this issue is a priority with the student---the decision to attend a school with low or no athletic fee is completely and totally within their control.

First, there's a huge quantitative difference between HS students, whose "fees" for athletics takes the form of the taxes their parents pay, and the taxes everyone else in the school district pays even if they have no kids in school, and the specific tacked-on fees that we are talking about for G5 and FCS schools. The former are tiny and diffuse, probably pennies per student per year, the latter, significant.

E.g., in my district here in Baton Rouge, I pay about $150 a year in property taxes that go to fund public schools. That's for funding the entirety of the public school system, all aspects of it. The fraction of this that goes to buy uniforms for football players is probably a dollar or two at most. Contrast that with the hundreds of dollars a semester students at some colleges pay.

Second, there's a major qualitative difference as well. At colleges, regular students are soaked to actually fund the attendance of the athletes. E.g., at UConn, a student pays for their own tuition and books, and then is socked with a fee to help pay for an athlete's tuition and books. So regular students are incurring extra costs and debt to pay for free rides for other students. That doesn't happen in middle school.

Third, the "choice" argument is disingenuous, because it forces a student to make choices they shouldn't have to. A Houston or USF student who thinks their business or engineering program is the best fit for them shouldn't have to choose between that and paying an athletic fee, because athletics isn't a proper part of the mission of a university. It's a false-choice situation. Bad.

As for the comments about "self-sustaining": This is a damning indictment. At public grade and high schools, athletics is touted as fun, recreation activity for students, part of the Platonic ideal of developing mind and body. At colleges, intercollegiate athletics is supposed to BRING IN money. It's touted as an investment that pays off in marketing and other benefits for the university. Truth is, of course, at 90% of all FCS and FBS schools, it obviously costs way more than it brings in, which is why fees are needed. The claims about "front porch" and the like don't pan out, if they did, no fees would be needed.

I am happy to find out that USF's athletic fee is relatively low compared to some other G5 schools, but until it is down to zero, it's a bad thing.

Gotta say---I'd be absolutely shocked if your able to run a local school district on $150 per household. I know my school property taxes are right around $2K and that doesnt include the big chunk of funding that the district gets from the state (about 40% of the budget comes from state sales taxes if I remember correctly). I suspect the tax bite to run your school district is bigger than you think--as is the pro-rata cost of athletics and non-academic functions at the municipal school district level. In terms of size, collegiate athletic budgets are about 2-3% of total spending and about half of those budgets are self funding---so really, only about 1-1.5% is actually being "spent" by the typical G5 university If I remember correctly, my area's school district spends about 2% on athletics---so very similar numbers.

FWIW, my state income tax and local property taxes are about $1,500 total. There is sales tax as well, so maybe I spend about $10 a day on that, that's maybe $1,900 in overall state and local taxes combined per year, and that's to fund everything that state and local government spends on. So no way am I paying anywhere near $2k for public school alone.

Your area spends 2% on athletics? That seems strange. E.g., I just looked up New York City. Their public school budget is approximately $24 Billion per year, spending on athletics is about $27 million per year, or about 1/8 of one percent of spending.

Now athletics can cost more than that, so how is it paid for? Often, USER FEES.

In many places, if a kid wants to play high school football, it might cost $400 in registration and insurance and equipment fees to do so. BUT, who pays that? The KID does, the athlete does. He or his parents have to come up with that money, other kids and their parents - nor the general taxpayer - do not.

So while yes, high school athletics can be costly, those costs are overwhelmingly borne not by the school district, but by the athlete himself. Other students aren't socked a fee to pay those costs for the athlete, they have to pay it themselves. You don't play, you don't pay.

Contrast that with Houston, USF, or UConn, where *other students* are drained of fees to pay for the athlete's uniform, insurance, AND, not just their athletic costs, but their regular student costs like books and tuition!

Huge difference there.

Quo if a kid is 100% against subsidizing UCONN's athletics, there's always Western Connecticut State University, Southern Connecticut State University, Central Connecticut State University, Eastern Connecticut State University, and Charter Oak State College. There's also five other campuses of UCONN. Plus 165 private schools in New England and 239 in New York and New Jersey.

Plenty of options.

(04-09-2018 01:00 PM)McKinney Wrote:  Quo if a kid is 100% against subsidizing UCONN's athletics, there's always Western Connecticut State University, Southern Connecticut State University, Central Connecticut State University, Eastern Connecticut State University, and Charter Oak State College. There's also five other campuses of UCONN. Plus 165 private schools in New England and 239 in New York and New Jersey.

Plenty of options.

This is a little disingenuous - UConn's the only public research university in the state, so if you're a student looking for certain qualities in a school and you don't have private school money they're the only game in town. At least with Cincinnati they're one of ten public research universities available to in-state students, so you actually do have options. I'm not one of those "tear down the nanny state!" firebrand conservatives, but at a certain point I do think it's fair to demand some accountability from the government and its institutions.

(04-09-2018 01:00 PM)McKinney Wrote:  Quo if a kid is 100% against subsidizing UCONN's athletics, there's always Western Connecticut State University, Southern Connecticut State University, Central Connecticut State University, Eastern Connecticut State University, and Charter Oak State College.

UConn is a probably a better school than those schools, and might have superior academic resources, professors, etc. Or maybe it just has a major I prefer.

Why should I have to give that up to avoid paying a stupid athletic fee? That doesn't make sense.