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the accounting that goes into whether a sports program is profitable or not is sort of tricky scholarships are counted at the full tuition rate its obvious th
by pitt1980 13y ago
the accounting that goes into whether a sports program is profitable or not is sort of tricky
scholarships are counted at the full tuition rate
its obvious that the marginal cost of educating 80 some football players isn't 0, but its not obvious that its the full tuition rate
a sizeable chunk of students are offered some sort of financial package to attend a university,
some non zero percentage of football players come from low income situations such that it is unlikely they would be paying full tuition sans the scholarship
also a dispropotionate number of scholarship athletes are from out of state, if they disappear its unlikely that the replacement 80 some students would be paying as much out of state tuition
- jofer 13y agoGood point. However, alumni donations are often strongly correlated to the performance of the sports teams (at universities with traditions of popular sports teams, anyway). Donations are a non-trivial part of a university's income stream. Also, a prestigious sports team can definitely boost undergraduate enrollment. It's effective advertising, as several people have pointed out. From an academic standpoint, I've seen the bad side of popular sports teams (_Heavy_ pressure on professors and TA's to give star players high grades despite a complete lack of attendance.). I personally feel like most (particularly in the southeast US) of the large schools with popular sports teams have absolutely awful undergraduate programs. That's partly just a function of being a large university, though. There are certainly negatives along with the positives.