In fact, with the rate of brain-damage suffered by american football players, I suspect sports are actually a detriment to education, not even counting the resources they suck from it.
EDIT: Another case against college sports, and sports scholarships: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/26/drexel-basketball-r...
Ask your alma mater's department heads, deans and development officers if sports matters. Research (even tech transfer) doesn't raise enough cash to fund our current university system. Tuition doesn't either; and state support (if applicable) doesn't get far either.
Donors provide the rest. The best way to butter up a donor is through university brand prominence. A non Ivy League school can't compete in the same fields as an MIT, Stanford, Cal Tech, etc. You have to increase your university brand through any respectable means necessary. Sports is often that angle.
Go ask your endowed profs if sports matters in any factor to their compensation. It's likely they'll admit that it helps, at minimum.
Real learning occurs while playing sports. Soft skills, discipline, teamwork, personal fitness, and long-time dedication are just a few areas where sports help the whole person.
And are soft skills, discipline, teamwork, and long-term dedication not things that people learn running clubs, competing at quiz bowl, going hiking, hacking software in their free time? Then why is there such disproportionate funding for sports vs all of these other activities?
Having been involved in several clubs and club sports in college, you're treated like shit compared to varsity athletes. I'll be damned if the juggling club could reserve a room in the gym once a week to practice. The Tang Soo Do club had to fight to get enough funding from the college to buy pads and gloves for practicing and sparring with, and that's mostly because it actually brought in money as people outside the college paid to be able to take classes. And yet the football team, which was notorious for losing almost every game it played, had several full-time coaches and staff, its own building and stadium reserved only for their use, got bussed or flown all over the east coast for games and so on. Most other club activities were lucky if they could wrangle a hundred bucks a semester from the college for support.
No one in this entire thread has advocated disproportionate funding for sports. No one. Not once. So that argument is just grasping at something that doesn't exist.
Yes, soft skills + the other skills can be learned with running, quiz bowl, hiking, etc., but not everyone wants to do those things. Why should a swimmer be denied enjoyment because his favorite activity involves physical activity?
I am not denying that clubs get the short end of the straw regarding funding. I was on both sides of the table, playing on large teams and being in small clubs. Once again, no one is advocating this.
You were replying to someone who said that academic scholarships would probably be a better investment than sports scholarships by saying "Not every lesson or piece of information can be learned from a book or in a classroom. Good luck getting soft skills there." That implies to me that you disagree with the comment you're replying to, and think that varsity sports deserve the disproportionate funding that they are getting.
If that was not your intent, I apologize for misconstruing you, but you could be clearer in your comment.
I think that we're actually in agreement here. I think that varsity sports get too much time and attention paid to them; I think that clubs and club sports get less support as a consequence. I don't think that athletics should exist at a college, but I do think that it should be in the same category as any other extra curricular, not some semi-pro thing that drains so many resources at the expense of all other extra-curricular activities.
Also, they usually had average grades and test scores as well. They just worked hard in college to try to get a good job.
Many still had to take out college loans as well -- athletes aren't all 100% scholarshipped. Most are luck to get books covered. I know this potentially still applies to your argument, but I respectfully feel that your arguments are based on distanced observation alone.
The money has to come from somewhere. It's the equivalent of state school's MVP. My alma mater, Oklahoma, did the very thing. Their engineering's growing by leaps and bounds, and has had the #1 meteorological research program in the world, and also secured the National Weather Center. CS hasn't grown as aggressively, but it is still growing.
I have no data, but I think that those DARPA grants are at least substantial, some concrete figures would be nice though.
Ever seen 50,000 alumni show up on campus for a theoretical physics conference?
And when those 50,000 alumni show up on campus, what do they do to make the education at that university better?
Bzz, wrong. Education is a college's job. A university's core business is research. Education is just a part-time money making scheme to keep the university alive.
Education isn't about the 'information', it's about the collective sum of benefits that a university provides. If it were strictly about the education (courses, books, etc.) there would be no purpose -- most of it can be found for free online.
University is about the whole package, of which a strong alumni network is often a major piece. Without a strong sports program, many of these schools would lose a large fraction of their alumni's attention - and I don't mean dollars and cents. To use a previous commenter:
Ding ding ding. I went to a D3 school for football, and when considering a possible MBA, something I was looking at half jokingly, but half legitimately, was whether the school was large - because I thought it would make watching sports on TV for the rest of my life, and having true attachment, a lot more fun. Undoubtedly, as I progress further in my career, that fervor would have grown with team success, and also made my attachment more real - while my current alma mater (Chapman University in Southern California) - would have fallen away from consciousness with no legitimate way to grab my attention. Whether I make a donation to any school in the future is up for debate, and I am now not likely to get an MBA based on many of the points raised here and elsewhere - but the point made on this comment hits the nail on the head. I find it extremely unlikely that I will ever donate to my small private school in Southern California - because the thoughts of how it's helped me depart with every passing second, and they have no way to get it back.
This obviously leads to a weakening of the school on a whole, in terms of future enrollment and overall reputation, leading to a decline in the quality of education.
I also haven't seen a theoretical physics conference gather dozens students late on a Friday night, but that doesn't mean kegs are good for education.
burgerbrain seems to be saying this, which is what I responded to.
> When those subjects which tie into academics better than athletics.
Tie in differently, not better. There are many ways to learn and many lessons to be learned. Drama, debate, music, newspaper, and sports, among others, are all different paths to learn those lessons.
I am not justifying the large amounts of money spent on sports programs. What I am saying is that sports do educate people and provide an important opportunity for students in many ways. Saying "nothing is learned while playing sports" is false.
burgerbrain seems to be saying this"
Absolutely incorrect. I merely believe they should not receive disproportionate funding, compared to other non-academic clubs; and assert that like other non-academic clubs, they should play absolutely no role in acceptance.
"Tie in differently, not better"
BULLSHIT. Journalism (newspaper club) is a respected academic study. Tackling dudes on a lawn over a ball is not. Drama, debate, and music are similarly intellectual endeavours, not sports.
"What I am saying is that sports do educate people"
Spoken like a true meathead. Even if they did educate, which is a laughable claim, they have no place in the curriculum of universities.
The professor's interest in skiing gave him direction for his life's work. Professor performs manufacturing and machining research, using his intuition and experience from the slopes and applies it in his labs.
This professor is a campus favorite, inspiring many in his courses, and often advises senior design projects that deal with winter sports technologies, which gives those students skills that are valuable in the workplace.
Without a ski race program this person would not have even been in college. He would have been skiing and skiing only. The US would not have had a competent manufacturing researcher and professor.
This seems to show benefit from sports programs. No?
I gave a concrete example of how they did help. That is all.
There is a lot of athlete-hating in this thread.
Key part of your post.
American Football is not a course, and contains no intellectual content. Pretending otherwise just makes you look a fool.
Learning how to organize a team of people with varying skills and abilities to come together, set a plan, execute on it repeatedly, and then repeat that day in and day out over 4 years through countless types of adversity and unexpected events while living in close quarters and changing as people over time has no value on the job.
/sarcasm
Nukes certainly ended the war earlier, and I believe they saved tens if not hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides, but they didn't create victory. Victory was already a foregone conclusion by the time we used them--they just accelerated it and lowered the cost dramatically.
One can be Utopian and wish for that day.
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects...