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Recently, institutions of higher learning have shown the movement to concentrate on increasing their spending on sports rather than academic matters. The aim of university education is to equip the learners with skills and competencies that will enable them to solve the real world problems. By the time they graduate, they are expected to have gained not only expertise in their field of study but also social skills which they mostly learn through co-curricular activities like sports. However, considering previous statistics, it has been noted that most universities are spending a lot of money for sports purposes opposing to the expectations of parents who are paying a lot of fees to see to it that the intellectual capacity of their children’s improves. The aim of this study is to evaluate what could be the reason for university’s increasing spending on sports rather than on education matters.
The objective of higher institutions of learning is to equip the learners with intellectual skills that will increase their chances of success in the competitive world. More of the universities expenditure is thus expected to provide for academic matters as opposed to sports. Recent statistics shows that universities are spending more on sports rather than academic matters. In a bid to understand this scenario and know whether it’s worthwhile, we performed a qualitative research in several institutions of higher learning within the United States.
Despite instructions on universities by the main figures to increase their spending on academic matters and research, they are still spending much money on sports. With regard to a certain report released by the Association of University Professors, higher learning institutions have lost their principal mission of providing quality education to the learners by prioritizing on athletics.
According to universities they are spending more because they can afford the expenditure. Not just the universities overspend on sports but the government is also doing the same. For instance, during the year 2015-2016 the Arkansas athletic program spent more than $ 180 million to supply for renovation of the football stadium, installation of parking lots to be used by departments during game days and the university network as well as new video boards fixings. All this was achieved without relying on the university for financial support.
Since the legislation of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) creating more room for investments in student-athletics and covering full cost of attendance, the University of Arkansas has shown substantial attention in athletic programs. This university have a self-sustaining athletic program where by several students have shown remarkable progress nationally resulting to over 450 students in various sports activities being sponsored fully. As the students participating in athletics acquire these benefits some of the incomes goes to the universities. For instance, when students are selected to participate in sports activities outside their institutions, the universities tend to prioritize on organizing for the students’ travel arrangements which result in loss of class time.
More often, parents have been complaining of the increasing tuition fees charged by higher institutions to provide for athletic purposes. For instance, last a few years past, Auburn university purchased a high definition screen measuring 11,000 square feet for the football stadium. This was among the largest video boards in the entire North America. As the director for athletics in the university announced the procurement, he claimed that the video board would help sell tickets and also help in recruitment of splendid athletes. This made the Auburn Athletic board of trustees to commend $ 13.9 million expenditures to be used in procurement of the video board despite the athletic department posting a shortage of over $ 17 million in the previous year. Parents were the most affected by this move since they are expected to obey with the high college’s athletic departments financial demands.
Some previous researchers have argued that the increasing university spending in sports is worthwhile since it enables the students to develop high self-esteem, discipline, physical fitness and competitiveness which are essential qualities that will enable the student to excel academically. They also argued that the investment is worthwhile since it has helped in realization of talents. Some students who used to be viewed as losers for being poor in academics have managed to realize a feeling of self-worth by being good in athletics. Without the emphasis in sports possibly such a student could have lived believing that he/she is a loser. However, most of the researchers argues that the high expenditure in sports than in academic matters by institutions of higher learning is not worthwhile and should be stopped because it puts more suffering on parents who are forced to outgo some of their basic desires to comply with the high college’s athletic departments demands.
Some researchers did not see any benefit on the over expenditure on sports. They argued that the main reason making the universities to over spend on sports was to satisfy their own self-interests since they are able to amass a lot of profits in the process of organizing for the sporting activities and procurement of sporting equipment’s. Due to the high incomes institutions of higher learning obtain from athletic programs, most of them have chosen to give more priority on athletic programs (Hobson, W., & Rich, S. 2015). As a result of these diverse arguments from previous researchers, we saw a need to perform our own research to make a better judgement on whether the high expenditure by most universities on sports is worthwhile.
Due to inadequate funds, we did not manage to perform one on one interviews. However, we managed to access the contacts of the athletics departments in the following universities and interviewed them through the telephone: Rutgers University, the University of Arkansas, University of California Berkeley and Ohio University. We selected the above universities due to their popularity in over spending on sports rather than education matters. Besides, the telephone interviews we also used the internet to search information about their expenditure in sport activities. also, we managed to have face to face interviews with three parents having children in some of the named universities whom we selected at random. The following are some of the research questions formulated to guide us in the research:
Questions to the university athletics department officials.
Since the main mission of institutions of higher learning is to educate the learners for them to be helpful in solving life problems and increase their employability in the competitive job market, why are you prioritizing in over expenditure in sports which is a co-curricular activity?
Where do you normally obtain money to finance the various co-curricular programs?
Do the sporting activities result to better class performance on the participating students?
Question to the parents
What do you think about the increasing universities expenditure in sports rather than in academic activities? do you think the expenditure is worthwhile?
From the telephone interviews, most of the officials we interviewed argued that the high expenditure was worthwhile because it helped the students become more disciplined, develop competitiveness and become more fit physically. More so, participating in the sport activities will help some students who are not good in class realize their potential in sports which can make them more successful in life. The sporting activities also equip the students with social skills that enable him/her to relate more effectively with other people in the society.
In most of the cases we learnt that the funds are obtained through increasing the tuition fees charged on parents though well-established athletic departments in rich universities are able to acquire funding from the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). This funding by the NACC on universities to expand their athletic programs happened to be the main reason why universities with poorly established athletic departments over charged the students fees to keep up with the well-established ones for them also to receive the funding (Toma, J. D. 2010). However, athletic directors at the institutions experiencing financial losses in their athletic investments defended their perception by claiming that they do not spend to keep up the benefiting universities but rather create media exposure will help market the institutions to get more applicants thus increasing fundraising ability. The also argued that since the American population have proved to be in so much love with athletics, they had to do all they could to keep up with others; not to get more funding from the government but to avoid losing more students to the universities with well-established athletic departments.
Majority of the officials interviewed argued that the sporting activities helped the students perform better in class but according to the information we gathered from the internet this was a paradox since in most of the institutions, students rarely have time for classes because they mostly training for the athletics the institutions prioritize in. All the parents we interviewed were against the high expenditure by universities to cater for sports. They felt that it was unfair for the institutions subjecting them to the high tuition fees which they barely afford. They argued that should the institutions continue with the trend they should seek alternative sources of funds and stop exploiting them.
After assessing the information from the interviews and from the internet we learnt that the learning institutions are over spending on sports in a manner that is beyond logic. For instance, after Auburn University purchasing the high definition video board which was equivalent to a five-storey building, the University of Rutgers located about 1,000 miles away made a procurement of $ 102 million to expand their football stadium. They did this in a bid to keep up with Auburn which was far much ahead of it in terms of financial sufficiency and sports advancement. The former director of athletics in the university argued that this would make the program more sufficient financially (Hobson, W., & Rich, S. 2015). This depicts that the over expenditure could be as a result of poor management of the athletics department. Also, it shows how athletic departments in various universities are competing with each in order to get more funding from the government. A few years later the Rutgers’s athletic program had accumulated a deficit of over $ 30 million.
Some athletic departments in universities such as Auburn and Arkansas have well established athletic programs which enable them to obtain funding from the government for establishing modern lavish facilities for sporting activities (Shattock, M. 2010). This high funding by the government on the well-established athletic programs have caused poor athletic departments in some universities such as Rutgers to subject their students to mandatory fees for athletics which are seven times than the academic fees. As if that is not enough manipulation on the parents, they also siphon money from academic budgets with an aim of keeping up with the well-established universities for them to receive sports funding too from the government.
After thorough assessment of the research findings we realized that the high expenditure by institutions of higher learning have both positive and negative impacts which are mostly associated with government funding. For instance, the poorly established are forced to overcharge the students high fees in order to keep up with other institutions having well-established athletic departments or else they lose students to those institutions considering that the American population loves athletics very much (Drut & Raballand, 2012). However, those institution experiencing financial losses should understand that overcharging the students fees is not the solution; in fact, it could cause more parents to transfer their children to institutions that charge less fees. They should thus seek other alternatives. However, I feel that the solution to these unreasonable high expenditures should be solved through shifting of focus from sports to academic matters. This is because universities are failing to achieve their main obligation of offering quality education to learners by focusing on less significant competitions to fulfill their selfish interests (Lewin, T. (2014). Both academic and athletic matters are necessary to the students thus should be kept at a balance. This can be achieved through the NCAA offering financial support to all athletic departments in universities thus reducing the competitions. If this happens, more focus will definitely be shifted to academic matters which is the main objective of learning institutions.
From the above discussion of the research findings, it is evident that institutions of higher learning are overspending money to finance athletic programs which they perceive as potential investments due to high returns involved. This has made the universities to give more priority on the sport matters rather than academics which should not be the case. After performing the research, we were able to unearth that universities and colleges overspend in athletic programs to take advantage of the NCAA provisions that allows full financial coverage of the attendance and make profits from the sponsored contracts of improving their athletic programs. I thus feel that overspending on the sports programs by institutions of higher learning is not a worthwhile interest and thus it should be transformed. However, further research should be done to cover the areas we not able to evaluate such as the statistics of universities expenditure on athletics.
References
Berkowitz, S., & Schnaars, C. (2017). Retrieved from https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/college/2017/07/06/colleges-spending-more-their-athletes-because-they-can/449433001/
Colleges Are Spending 7 Times More on Athletics Than They Are on Academics. (2015). Retrieved from https://www.thenation.com/article/colleges-are-spending-7-times-as-much-on-athletics-than-they-are-on-academics/
Drut, B., & Raballand, G. (2012). Why does financial regulation matter for European professional football clubs? International Journal of Sport Management and Marketing 2, 11(1-2), 73-88.
Hobson, W., & Rich, S. (2015). Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/sports/wp/2015/11/23/running-up-the-bills/?noredirect=on
Lewin, T. (2014). Colleges Increasing Spending on Sports Faster Than on Academics, Report Finds. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/07/education/colleges-increasing-spending-on-sports-faster-than-on-academics-report-finds.html
Shattock, M. (2010). Managing successful universities. McGraw-Hill Education (UK).
Toma, J. D. (2010). Intercollegiate athletics, institutional aspirations, and why legitimacy is more compelling than sustainability. Journal of Intercollegiate Sport, 3(1), 51-68.
