[slg]

>how the sporting department despite those figures manages to be a net budgetry drain on almost every school which has one

And so are music departments.

Which I think is part of the point here. I firmly believe that playing right tackle can teach you just as much as playing the oboe, yet intellectuals tend to look down on former and praise the latter. Organized sports are not only a hobby and social gathering, but they can also serve as part of a greater learning and education experience. There is a reason why a few of the Ivy League schools rank near the top of all universities when it comes to the number of varsity athletes.

>that college-level sports is hugely abusive and exploitative to the players which actually play it.

You need to be specific here. Big revenue college sports (basically only Div I basketball and Div I-A football) are definitely exploitative, but most college athletes participate in sports that generate little revenue and it would be hard to argue they are being exploited.

[HarryHirsch]

Music departments are budget drains since when? The arts and humanities are actually rather cheap, they need nothing more than buildings, staff and a library. Science and engineering are the real whoppers, and as a rule cross-subsidized by A&H. Tuition per credit hour is the same, after all. The dean of the School of Arts & Sciences at a certain state school is on record saying that for the price of a chemistry professor she can pay a whole department of English.

That isn't the point. The point is that the mission of universities is academic pursuits, not athletics. If anyone wants to practice sports, power to him, but let him join the sports club, or let him start an inofficial intramurine league.

The wider point is that in America you can't earn much social capital by being knowledgeable about any academic subject, you have to be wealthy instead. That's a problem, and probably also explains many things about American society. Universities finally getting rid of organized sports might perhaps be able to change that.

[mmcclimon]

Music departments tend to be expensive in terms of faculty, sine most of their time is spent in private lessons. If an oboe studio has 10 students, that's essentially 10 hours a week in lessons alone. In that same 10 hours, an English professor might teach 60 students (if you figure 15 students/class with 2 hours MWF and a different 30 students Tue./Thu.). Those are numbers for a small school; at larger universities an English professor might lecture to 300 students a week in 10 hours, but that oboe professor is still seeing just 10 students.

[mgkimsal]

Huh? Are you talking about college? I thought the OP was talking about high school. We never had any private lessons. "Band" class was... 35+ kids in one room at a time, all playing at the same time. Band was almost always the largest single class I had, relative only to gym class. Sometimes gym was larger (40-50 at a time), but I think I had a year with more people in band class than in my pahys-ed class.

[analog31]

Like you say, a distinction has to be made between big and small schools. I did my undergrad at a college where the starting quarterback was a physics major. There were no athletic scholarships.

Where I went to grad school, that would have been unthinkable. There was a special major that most of the football and mens basketball players chose, one of the departments of "studies."

There's no university where the oboist in the orchestra has to be given a fake education. Indeed, most music majors these days wisely pick up a second major.

[glesica]

> >how the sporting department despite those figures manages to be a net budgetry drain on almost every school which has one > And so are music departments.

If the band directors made millions of dollars, you would have a good point.

[briandear]

If band directors brought in millions in revenue and PR value to a school, then YOU would have a point. Nobody would have ever heard of Gonzaga university if it weren't for basketball. At the schools with million dollar coaches, they bring in millions in revenue in both tickets, licensing as well as intangible PR value. I am not defending or disparaging college sports, I am making the point that a school's band program isn't generally adding revenue. It rarely attracts big donors. While Div I sports might have an operating loss (maybe,) the net income to a school, through donations, PR value, etc far exceeds the cost. How many kids want to go to Florida State that don't live in Florida? By attracting more national applicants, a school can charge out of state tuition that directly benefits their bottom line. There are many benefits to a school that aren't measured with the myopic view of "athletic income - athletic cost = profit of the program."

[glesica]

If the donations go to the athletic programs, then it doesn't matter. There are also numerous hidden costs associated with athletic programs, like law enforcement and extra tutoring for athletes. On top of that, most schools require ALL students (even those who don't attend sports games) to pay a fee, which acts as an additional subsidy. Even further, many public universities use part of the money they receive from their respective states to fund athletic programs.

The band students pay tuition to be there. If the football players paid tuition to be on the team and the sports teams were subsidized at the same rate as the band program, I wouldn't care.

There are a handful (maybe 20?) of schools that probably make an overall profit from their sports teams, but the rest of the thousands of colleges and universities in the US operate their sports programs at a loss. Those are really the schools I'm talking about.