I will never understand what quality education and sports have in common.
Ever seen 50,000 alumni show up on campus for a theoretical physics conference?
Ever seen 50,000 alumni show up on campus for a theoretical physics conference?
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?
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
I gave a concrete example of how they did help. That is all.
There is a lot of athlete-hating in this thread.
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.
One can be Utopian and wish for that day.
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.