I would prefer a different model, where the university did not run semi-professional sports teams at all, and where real student-athletes played their sports without $100,000 subsidies and athletic palaces.

The answer, according to the professors, is to continue to have football and basketball subsidize the other sports, but to cut back on expenses so that intercollegiate athletics in general is revenue-neutral.

I see the problem, but I don’t understand the solution. Why is Berkeley running a semi-professional football team, with “student”-athletes who are academically underqualified compared to normal Berkeley students? Why is it the football team’s responsibility to support the crew team? Why do normal student-athletes, for example swimmers and field hockey players, get the same deluxe professional sports facilities that the semi-professionals on the football team get?

Wouldn’t it be better to stop running professional sports teams with professional sports facilities, at the cost of over $100,000 per athlete per year, and instead offer a modest subsidy for modest sports teams for actual students?

I can’t speak to any campus but my own, but unless you’re suggesting we go to offering classes 24/7, your argument about classrooms being empty “most of the time” doesn’t hold here. You can find a room before 9 AM fairly easily, and after 4 PM it’s not difficult, but if you’re trying to schedule a classroom that you don’t have squatter’s rights to between those hours, forget it.

If you compare the occupancy rates for the Berkeley classrooms and the football stadium, I’m quite certain that you’ll find the stadium lagging way behind.

How does selling it assist future university scholars who can be granted access to a vault, but not necessarily, to a Wall Street trader’s living room?

I am not certain the point that a football stadium will be empty most of the time makes you forward yardage…
After all, most classrooms and halls are empty most of the time too.

This issue also makes me think of the recent news regarding David Nutt and the scientific advisory board in the UK. The professors might know better, but the executives may ignore the experts in favor of the democratic majority.

Anyway, keep up the good work!

I’m really sorry, and for a former UCLA student to be sorry for Berkeley means the situation’s really bad. We just hired a new president here, and during the campus visit I asked each of them about intercollegiate athletics. Our athletics department is also supposed to be self-supporting, but is receiving sizable subsidies from the academic side like your is.

We had five candidates, and I got basically the same rah-rah, nothing unites the Univer$ity and it$ $upporter$ like intercollegiate athletics. So I expect that when we reach the five year point and our athletics department is still being subsidized from the academic side, we’ll just suck it up and forgive that debt too.

They won’t admit that in terms of student retention, there are many better places we could put the money than down the NCAA rathole. Our marching band and its auxiliaries provide a tie to the campus for nearly as many students as the athletics department for a miniscule fraction of the cost.

I don’t understand museum curators at all. There need to be some controls on the disposition of the collection, but that’s what Boards of Trustees are for.