Education - Public vs PrivateFollow

Which is it? I'm responding to what idiggory is advocating. That's what I'm labeling "nationalizing the education system". I'm not sure how pointing out that other countries which don't use that model do better than the US somehow constitutes a counter to my disagreement with the "let's put it all in the federal government's hand" argument? I mean, doesn't rdm's statement better counter idiggory's than mine?

I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that funding is often separated based on departments. So while one portion of the Art department might earn some money, the Athletics department as a whole earns a hell of a lot more. Now, I don't necessarily agree that this should confer special benefits to athletes directly, but at the end of the day, that's more of an internal decision for a school to make and they ought to have the freedom to make it. If the school decides that they are better off economically by attracting good players to their Athletics programs by providing benefits, then they should be able to choose to do so if they want.

You're free to attend a school with different focuses if you want. No one's forcing you to go. Which I think kinda dovetails back into the earlier question of choice. The issues with inequities of spending at the College level are less problematic exactly because every student has a choice of which college to attend. This is not as much the case with K-12 education in the US, so spending choices have a more direct and unavoidable consequence for the students.

Then write an angry letter to the Dean and explain to him that the reason you are no longer attending Rutgers (and paying tuition) is because of this practice. Vote with your dollars. No one's forcing you to attend that school.

You're right, I could drop out and waste four years of investment (because it's absolutely true that no other school is going to accept that I've finished all of my general reqs. and the reqs. for both my majors). But that's just stupid. I shouldn't have to boycott my education because I don't agree with how the school is spending money.

No, you shouldn't. You should have gone to a better school that didn't place as much stock in athletics. Princeton is quite adequate for some areas of study and nearby. Transfer there?

How does the school's athletic program affect you as a student in any meaningful way? Very little, if any, of that money comes from the general budget, but rather is generated from the revenue from the program itself. Is it just the idea that "wahh, these guys get a free ride because they play football"? I go to a university with fairly well-off basketball and football programs and I don't give two ***** what happens with the athletes. Even supposing they get a degree they don't really deserve, it doesn't change my life any.

Boohoo, it's unfair. Suck it up and focus on your own life. Quit this immature ******** where you have to rail on somebody for being better off than you.

I agree, but in the grand scheme of it all, that's such a small number it's more of an added bonus than an arguing point.

I go to a public institution, and our budget is easily available. It's not hard to prove at all--it's an established fact that our athletics program is draining far more funds than it is bringing in. Rutgers' athletics department has a deficit of $27 million. Individual sports might make money, but the program overall is being supported by tuition dollars, not by their own revenue.

We also spend more on our athletics department than any other public institution in the country, with 40% of the budget coming from institutional subsidies ($8.5 million was directly from student fees). Our spending on the program has increased by $27 million per year. And all this time, we've had salary freezes and layoffs for professors, reduced section numbers with increased class sizes, a very tangible turn in favor of lectures over normal classes or seminars, and a significant increase in the number of classes taught by grad students.

We are also facing a significant issue when it comes to faculty who are increasingly uninterested in remaining at the University. Many of our programs are some of the best in the nation, and the tenured professors could easily get jobs at other prestigious universities. They all took a pay freeze two years ago, and did so willingly. But they are also getting less work than they used to on top of it, because they are more expensive to utilize than grad students.

End result? MANY of our top professors are becoming increasingly disinterested about remaining at the university. This won't affect me directly, but it WILL hurt future students.

When our current president took office, he gave them a large spending increase, but mandated that sports needed to be self sufficient within 5 years. That was a decade ago, and they are still costing the university money.

If we had been funneling $27M more per year into maintaining the integrity of our academics in the economic downturn, things wouldn't be so clearly different where academics are concerned.

So, no, I'm not confused. The Rutgers budget issues are well known, and they are a large part of why our president resigned this year.

Maybe the athletics program COULD produce revenue. But not with the university increasing its spending on the program so much every year. There's no chance they'd close that gap for a very long time.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-16/rutgers-boosting-athletics-at-expense-of-academics-fails-to-emulate-texas.html

Seems to me like your school is just a ****** example of sports.

For example (from above article) UoT:



66% of the total revenue of UoT is provided through one sport. This sport props up all the academics in the University.

They're probably trying to produce the situation you've shown with other schools and that doesn't happen overnight. It takes time to build that sort of athletic program that generates income for the school. Or some dumb luck and winning a championship you never should have.

That's what the plan was. Only real problem I have with it is the constantly increased spending. We do sell the bulk of our football tickets, but it's ultimately not paying for the program. And the reason it isn't is because of spending increases every year.

A few years back, we dropped $100M on stadium upgrades, too, to boost the value of ticket sales. And they would have paid for it in the long run, but we just keep increasing the athletics budget. Which is a serious issue, because there's a hard cap on yearly ticket revenues, and it can't overcome the rising deficit.

We also just got royally f*cked because our head coach is leaving Rutgers for Tampa. And he only just announced that. Apparently, our top players all have scholarship agreements through him, not through the school, so they will likely be heading to Tampa as well. Apparently, the 600% salary increase he got over the past 7 years wasn't enough.

Yankees suck.

I agree, but they are a good example of a company that spends a huge some of money on sport, yet rakes in a retarded amount of money, and most of it has nothing to do with people entering the park.

(go Jays!)

Because it makes sense to pay 10k more a year to get an education that was no better?

My issue is with the fact that it's a state school. Maybe this is difficult for you to comprehend, but the fact is that my tax dollars would go to Rutgers even if I wasn't attending. Am I pissed that this is where my tuition is going as well? Hell yes. But my leaving wouldn't actually solve my problem, it would just make it worse by either reducing the quality of my education or increasing my debt.