Muddled priorities

[unixronin]

OK, so you want to become an officer in the Army.  You make it into West Point, you graduate ... and then you go to play pro football for the Detroit Lions?

Uh, no.  This is wrong, IMHO.  You volunteered, you got your way paid through West Point, you committed to serve; now it's time to serve.  You want to play pro football, you can do that after you get out.

Comments

[rob-thompson.livejournal.com]

There's another side of what Julie said that's equally as important - a winning season for a football team, particularly if it's Division I - means lots and lots of money for the General Revenues of the university. I was stunned when I learned how much money the football program alone at University of South Carolina returns to the general accounts - 20 Million. That's a 2 followed by 7 zeros - that's a lot of money for student programs, professor's and scholarships that aren't athletic. The entire football program is self-funded, from scholarships, travel, coaches salaries, etc. What they returned was after expenses...and they pay their head coach 2 million a year.

Instead of looking at like people are choosing to go to a university based on a football teams winning season...perhaps the students are looking at the winning season meaning the university has more money available for other things...good universities usually do. Georgia Tech is another school that I, even in the wilds of Canada, had heard of long before I ever got to South Carolina - they were famed both for college football and engineering.

You know why the Ivy League schools are important...because of money. They get their money through alumni donations - grateful alumni who have a Harvard/Yale/Columbia/Brown/Stanford degree earn more money (in theory) and therefore should donate lots to the foundations the universities have. Other schools earn theirs....why should they be seen as different or second rate?

[novel-tharkun.livejournal.com]

I'm largely clueless on the intricacies of this, by choice.

However, I'm curious, how do they calculate expenses? I was at a school as it decided (enacted?) upon a plan to increase its sports division level and rankings with the claim that it would improve the cash flow. In the immediate lead-up, and what I saw of the enactment while I was there was a reduction in merit- and perhaps need-based academic aid, stagnation or contraction in several departments that were the school's current leaders (if I recall correctly), and degradation of communication between the general student body and the school leadership executives.

I don't know if this proved financially advantageous. But regardless of its success, I'm curious if it's part of a pattern in this argument. If so, I'd say the leadership needs to talk to their philosophy department, instead of their accounting gurus.