[tophi]

A university is not just a place to go to learn anymore. It’s a big club that happens to be a place where you study.

You bond and make lifelong friends. Also a great place to find a partner for life.

Athletic departments are vital to the university system in American schools and their local economies.

[coldtea]

>A university is not just a place to go to learn anymore. It’s a big club that happens to be a place where you study.

Yes. That should stop.

>Athletic departments are vital to the university system in American schools and their local economies.

That too.

[bee_rider]

You could learn most things in a library for free. One of the big advantages of a University is being around other ambitious people at the same point in their career. The “big club” aspect is an important part of the value proposition.

We should definitely dump athletic departments, though, they are completely unrelated to the mission.

[Fomite]

As a faculty member at my institution put it: "Where in the land-grant university mission is giving our students traumatic brain injuries?"

[LudwigNagasena]

One of the big advantages of a university is that they give you credentials you can show to your employer (including university itself if you want to be a scientist). Everything else is 90% wishful thinking.

That leads to product bundling you describe, which should be vigorously fought with antitrust laws.

[mountainb]

If it's a big club, it's hard to justify the vast and ongoing federal support to the institutions through the grants, loan programs, and tax advantaged status.

[johnnymorgan]

This!

I love the honesty in this thread, higher Eds main value prop, outside of stem, has been the connections made.

However, no one to my knowledge has validate that assumption and my gut is telling me it's probably BS for the majority of people.

Let's see how that holds up when QE doesn't come back. IMO it's mostly around deal flow and finance where this plays out and I'd guess the percentage is very small that walk away with that value.

[nine_k]

As cost of university education spirals out of control, I expect that different forms of education, producing comparable levels of knowledge without all the expensive frills, will emerge, and be accepted by most employers. Of course places like MIT or Stanford won't be affected. A lot of smaller-caliber colleges will be.

[mihaaly]

Every human groups can be also a place where you "bond and make lifelong friends. Also a great place to find a partner for life". Regardless of activity and regardless if that group, like a chess club or drama society, has athletic scolarship level favoritism or not.

No, athletic departments are not vital for the above social secondary benefits of an education, just one of the hundreds others out there providing bonds and lifelong friends without this level of special treatment. For educational and academic purpose of universities it is even less vital, a tiny tiny fraction of the educated people rely vitally on this receiving good education throughout the history and around the world. If it was gone it was not missed much, mostly by athletics not graduates, academics and educators.

[onos]

Agree. A lot of the frustration and confusion here seems to be due to assuming these universities should just serve the smartest kids. The truth is that in practice they provide credentials for both elites and experts, and the former need not be brainiacs.

[caddemon]

I get the value of the major D1 college sports teams in the university experience, but honestly who gives a shit if Harvard is good at golf or not? I don't imagine anyone outside of people on the e.g. squash team are impacted by squash at Harvard. Same goes for non-elite (in the socioeconomic sense) sports like track and field.

I love sports and I think we need more opportunities for recreational play of sports after high school. But I just don't get the point of schools with middling varsity teams in unpopular sports continuing to pour resources into those teams.

I'd love to know if there are good reasons for it I'm missing though.

[Beldin]

I would actually argue the opposite. Sports clubs are a great way for students to bond, to socialise, and to organise - not the only one, but around here, clearly an alternative to traditional student clubs and study associations.

This is fine and dandy for up to middling levels of achievement. But universities have no business being in professional sports. They do have a business accommodating professional athletes of a variety of sports, but that's where the mid-level sports clubs come in: enough decent facilities to stay in shape, but not required to provide Olympic-level of training.

If sports clubs want to aim higher, it's up to their (student-run) board to get there. Basically: universities should provide decent facilities, not run the teams.

[blitzar]

How will Chad Chaddington III become a Harvard man if they dont have a good Lacrosse team?

[kergonath]

> Also a great place to find a partner for life.

All I read here is “it’s a great tool for social reproduction and stratification”. This is dystopian. We’ve seen what this mindset gave with Oxbridge, and it is toxic.

[itsacomment]

The US college sports system is mainly a feeding ground for professional sports teams, and none of that is necessary for either education or social destratification.

It is only vital in the sense that people have vested interests in it, but it's not to the benefit of the students.

[tophi]

For many students, the sport team culture and the activities surrounding these events is a big draw and motivator to attend university.

Most college athletes will not play at the professional level. Their young adult connections and the values they develop as being part of a team to overcome great challenges in preparation and on game day are important to our society. The stress one feels for a final exam does not compare to the emotions one feels on a big game-day! Valuable mental models are developed from athletics. Lessons learned are applied to every industry. it’s important simulation.

To deduce it all to irrelevance is a mistake that many intelligent people with no team or sporting experience often make to no fault of their own.