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Well, I agree with you that the rowing/badminton/chess teams probably don't get special treatment. But you don't seem to question the value of "top quality athl

Well, I agree with you that the rowing/badminton/chess teams probably don't get special treatment. But you don't seem to question the value of "top quality athletic programs." Why do we want them to exist in the first place? The ostensible point of university is to develop a student's mind to solve problems -- preferably in the real world, though humanities programs insist that paying $50k+/year to read poetry is just as valuable an investment. Even if you take that assertion at face value, I'm not sure anyone, anywhere pretends that playing basketball prepares the student-athlete for anything at all. Almost none of them have a chance at a professional sports contract. Most will graduate with useless majors, having squandered their youth and their health on pointless competitions to throw a ball in a hoop. It's STUPID. Everyone involved is wasting their time. I'm all for athletics in colleges. I played intramural sports and enjoyed it, because nobody pretended that it mattered. But I really don't see a compelling case for the subsidy of organized college sports... which, like someone pointed out, is really just a a subsidy for professional organizations. And it's not just the pointless waste of time and money in college sports. The argument for college as an institution is getting weaker and weaker as free online alternatives get better and better. Aside from getting drunk and cheering against UMichigan, what compelling features does Ohio State University offer versus Harvard's courses on edX?

kofejnik 12y ago
Very few people would be happy studying lambda calculus in their basement, most humans like being around other humans. Socialization is why colleges matter, not useless humanities degrees.
- Chevalier 12y ago
  And that's why, in functional countries, socialization is a natural consequence of urban design. You don't need a horrifically expensive excuse to drive to some random location to meet people -- you bump into them naturally as pedestrians and cyclists. University towns are the closest the US gets to Copenhagen, due to absurd subsidies of automobile traffic. But I agree with you about lambda calculus. Let's definitely keep higher education for STEM fields, where rigorous and difficult subjects would benefit from such educations. At the same time, let's be real. Most university students today are wasting their time getting worthless degrees, for no reason but that credential inflation has turned BAs/BSs into high school diplomas.

kofejnik 12y ago

Very few people would be happy studying lambda calculus in their basement, most humans like being around other humans. Socialization is why colleges matter, not useless humanities degrees.

Chevalier 12y ago
And that's why, in functional countries, socialization is a natural consequence of urban design. You don't need a horrifically expensive excuse to drive to some random location to meet people -- you bump into them naturally as pedestrians and cyclists. University towns are the closest the US gets to Copenhagen, due to absurd subsidies of automobile traffic. But I agree with you about lambda calculus. Let's definitely keep higher education for STEM fields, where rigorous and difficult subjects would benefit from such educations. At the same time, let's be real. Most university students today are wasting their time getting worthless degrees, for no reason but that credential inflation has turned BAs/BSs into high school diplomas.