That’s what Walter Russell Mead says, in another very interesting blog post of his (he has several a day), where he argues, in regard to America’s world leadership in higher education, that
college athletics, and especially the high profile football and basketball programs, have done more to make American universities the envy of the world than all the math clubs and science fairs held since the beginning of time. Varsity athletics, and especially all male varsity athletics in football and basketball, are the heart and soul of the alumni fundraising that gives American universities their uniquely deep financial resources…
I never thought of it that way but Mead may be on to something. My alma mater did not have a varsity sports program of any kind—which I thought was perfectly fine at the time—but it did have well-known financial problems—and with a pitifully small endowment—and that only worsened over time. And cash-strapped, resource poor French universities have never heard of varsity sports programs (nor French high schools; the very idea is laughable; what a bizarre Anglo-Saxon practice…). Correlation is not causation. But maybe there’s a little bit of one here.
This is an old and specious canard, which, as a long-time reader, I’m surprised to see entertained on this otherwise well-informed blog. The fact is that very very very few Big Football athletic programs turn a profit (about a dozen of 120+, in 2010, according to the NCAA itself which works very hard to dissimulate the economics of college sports), and even there, the accounting leaves out the considerable social, cultural, and moral costs of big time sports, as well as the possibility of sports crowding out alumni fundraising for non-athletic university functions. Take a look through Margaret Soltan’s archives at University Diaries, and read just a bit on the “recent unpleasantness” at Penn State before you buy into arguments like Mead’s.
Ellie, rest assured, I am more reflexively open to your argument than to Mead’s. I posted his link mainly for sport, as it were.
Antioch never struck me as a place that would attract jocks. On the other hand, I’ve known several bright, engaged people who graduated there, and been much more impressed with them than with, say, graduates of the University of Texas.
There were many bright students at Antioch during my time there (mid-late ’70s), some of whom were my friends and still are. And then there was me of course
But because of its financial problems, the college, beginning in the ’80s, started to admit anyone who could pay the tuition. There were still good students, of course – which I knew from professors there with whom I remained in contact -, but the academic standards went into decline.
As for jocks, no, Antioch was definitely not a school for them…
there may be a few exceptions in the Anglo-Saxon world (like rugby clubs at Oxford, Sydney, Trinity Dublin, etc.), but in general sports at universities outside the USA are just not that big of a deal; I went to school in Canada, and even there top varsity level, aside from rowing & hockey, is nothing compared to Division I A sports, both men’s & women’s. Basically, the idea of athletics located and tied to one’s school is most especially practiced in the USA, and to a lesser degree in Canada.
Back to France, sports are club-based and town-based, and they receive public subsidies that way. Many a rugby and soccer club, even in Ile-de-France, has its stadium and facilities subsidized by the local city government. No need to have things supported and paid for via the public school system.