(March 17, 2015 at 7:19 pm)SteelCurtain Wrote:(March 17, 2015 at 6:40 pm)Minimalist Wrote: Okay. Allow me to rephrase.
Why does a football program get scholarships while the physics dept. has to compete with marketing, business admin and psych?
Is it a university or a minor league football program?
Fair point. But the football program brings in money, whereas the physics department for the most part, doesn't. Whether it's the right way or not, football/basketball serves its purpose.
The answer to your question is that it's both. The biggest universities are the outliers, but the norm is that academics are the primary focus.
How long could academics remain the primary purpose when it is not academic success, but sports success, that underwrites the academics? Academics is just a cost center, whose reduction makes share holder's life easier, where as sports is the profit center, whose aggrandizement really rolls in the dole, and makes university a place desirable from enrichment perspective to be involved in.
While at the beginning, it may appear sports is facilitating academics. But in reality, it only serves to hide from the public how much the public has failed to underwrite academics needed for its own good, and preferred to lavish on bread and circus instead. It can't be long before bread and circus would be most of all that is left of university.
