Everyone loves watching college sports because the assumption is that the players play for pure love of the games and the fun of it. But are college sports taking the priority over more important issues for colleges and universities?
I would like to start by stating that college sports definitely have a place in the landscape of higher education. There are so many benefits, from providing students the opportunity to earn scholarships for school to helping generate general excitement for a school helping bring in much-needed donations and revenue for the school. However, the current system is not built for such needs, and has become unfocused, losing sight of what is really important. I will use the new High Altitude Performance Center currently under construction at the University of Wyoming.
The HAPC is a state-of-the-art, $44 million sport training center with a massive floor plan and excellent, over-the-top equipment meant to help athletes train to the best of their abilities. It is mostly funded by $24 million in donations and another $20 million from State of Wyoming education funds, and is named after the donors who spearheaded the project: Mick and Susie McMurry. It will have weight training facilities, a separate area for the UW football team to train, and an academic center staffed with professional tutors for the assistance of UW student athletes (roughly 400 students currently). It is replacing a $9.4 million building completed in 2001. While there has been much praise for this massive project, I would like to contrast it with another new building the University of Wyoming just built, the new Enzi STEM building.
The Enzi Stem building is a state-of-the-art, $50 million lab building for the STEM programs at the University of Wyoming. It has labs for all the sciences and incorporates features that research say help most with education, especially natural lighting. The building was funded entirely from federal funds allocated by the State of Wyoming government for the project, and is named after former U.S. Senator Mike Enzi of Wyoming, who spearheaded the effort to obtain funding for the project. It has three floors of excellent labs and classrooms with some of the best equipment available. The labs in the building are replacing botany labs last remodeled in the 1950’s and zoology, physiology, chemistry, and physics labs last remodeled over 45 years ago. It can serve up to 900 students at any given time.
Though I now feel the differences are obvious, I still feel the need to highlight the big differences. The HAPC is replacing a building barely a decade old, while the STEM building is replacing labs of which some were last remodeled (not built, just remodeled) over 6 decades ago. The HAPC is over half-funded by donors and also directly from state funds, while the STEM building was entirely funded by money scrounged up from money the state received from the federal government. And finally, the HAPC is being built for 400 student-athletes, while the STEM is built for more than 900 students. To give even more perspective, this comes at a time when the Wyoming state government has cut UW funding by $30 million over two years.
Yes, college sports are great. But when does a university need to reconsider priorities? And a sometimes even more important issue: how should donors decide what to donate their money towards? There are huge cuts being made across the board at UW, cutting majors and staff, and increasing tuition and student fees, to adjust for the budget cuts, all the while there is a brand-new building being built to replace a new building that has absolutely no affect on the quality or quantity of education the school provides, that is funded with more than the amount of money the school has lost in cuts. I cannot fault the school entirely for this predicament, but I have to say I am disappointed that the donors towards the building did not take a longer look at what was a real need of the University of Wyoming to determine what was actually needed. I am also disappointed that those who the donors contacted at the university did not say that there was no real need for a new athletics center, but that they need money for new labs, or new equipment, or simple help funding the various programs the school has. While everyone loves to have their name on a building, I am sure, I would also hope that people would love to know that the school didn’t have to let go of hard-working employees and limit opportunities for the thousands of students that attend the university.
College sports have their place, but they should not be at the forefront of priorities of any educational institution. Cuts in a school’s budget should impact sports first, not last. Universities should not aim to produce excellent athletes, but workers who can contribute to make the world a better place with their skills in the fields they know in depth and love.
College Student View 