‘Cut the Tiger’s balls off’
I am dissatisfied with Towson University’s athletics fees. I have $80 in my pocket that theoretically has to pay for food until January.
I am financially independent of my parents and it will be staying that way.
I never go to the games, and have no desire to do so. Why is it that I must pay nearly $400 extra to attend Towson University? I see two relatively small groups at the moment protesting about their funding being cut in favor of another but the census is forced to support this system regardless.
I would prefer the fee was a general fund that pooled the resource and divided it up to the departments based on demographics than paying for Towson to have an NCAA rating or a new stadium. Or let’s try this – let’s democratize the process.
Hand everyone his or her $399 back and if you want to support Towson’s Athletics pay for a game, buy a jersey, or donate the money right back. It would be interesting to see how much support these teams have then.
The Athletics Department would be the biggest opponent of this since it is well aware that the majority of the student body, while it does have a great deal of sympathy, does not actually support sports.
But until then I have to find a job to toil in so someone I never met can have a cut field and a pristine uniform.
In short, I wish we’d just cut the Tiger’s balls off.
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Amen.
Every single school in the United States does this. I can’t believe that out of your ridiculously high tuition costs you are up in arms about an athletic fee. Athletics are a part of a school, just like every single other fee in your tuition. I can’t even believe that this got published…
Financially independent from his parents. That’s hilarious.
How exactly do you, TU Alum, know he’s not financially independent? Are you psychic?
@Towson Student, yes, the tuition is ridiculously expensive. But it could be made cheaper by getting rid of this fee. $400 is a lot of money. It’s 2 months worth of food for my family of 3. I certainly could use an extra $400.
Sports doesn’t have to be eliminated, but the cost should be born by those that participate in it.
There are hundreds of NCAA schools (D1 and beyond) that do not charge athletic fees. $400 is not that unheard of, but it’s not like Towson is on the low end of the scale, probably higher for mid-majors, middle of the road nationally.
Great that this sentiment actually got published. Funny that the only reasoning that pro-sports folks can come up with is that every school does it. Why do they do it? It provides no value other than perhaps occasional entertainment to the student body and Towson places almost the whole cost of sports on its students. It is a rarity that a college sports program in any school be financially self sufficient, and Towson is far, far from it. So we have the student body paying their $400 per semester so that we can pay over twice as much to the basketball coach as to any professor and provide a bunch of communications majors with full ride scholarships. We pay tuition to get an education. We pay athletics fees for no good reason at all.
Having Towson athletics in the news will actually help you in your life after college. It puts Towson’s name out as a college, so when you’re going on an interview your employer might actually know a thing or two about Towson, instead of coming from a small school that no one knows of. It’s all to better Towson as a whole, if you don’t want to pay the fee, go to another school with no athletics.
If you’re financially independent shouldn’t you have a job, so you can have more than $80 in your pocket?
I’m sure glad I’m paying an extra $3200 for my education because someone can imagine an employer hiring me because some guys throw balls around at my college. An employer will know about Towson because it is the 4th largest university in MD. An interested employer will look at the ratings of Towson’s academics in relevant fields. Academics matter. College sports are just a weird, useless tradition.
Ad hominem attacks against the author for being poor are low blows, ps. I know that many student athletes don’t have to worry about paying for college, but the rest of us do. In fact the rest of us actually pay for the student athletes’ education.
Again false in arguing that athletic success increases the value of the degree. Athletic success is often used as a reason for growing enrollment, but even that data is murky at best. There is absolutely no statistical proof that athletic success creates a better reputation for the school. In fact, I would argue in the case of Miami (FL), Ohio State, SMU, Penn State that their athletic departments may have actually harmed the reputation of their respective schools.
As someone who has been in the professional workforce for 4 years and has been both interviewee and interviewer, I can say that knowledge of a candidate’s college plays no part in hiring decisions. Any employer wants to know what skills you can provide them with, and your resume and interview will show that. Having had a successful football team at your school does not count as a skill and will get you nowhere professionally.
I think college athletics programs should only be allowed if they’re paid for by the students who will be participating in them. I don’t expect an athlete to pay for me to go to school or for my participation in various student organizations so why should athletes expect that others should pay for them to go to school and play with balls?
It just doesn’t make sense for an educational institution to support sports above actual education.
Towson sports don’t give this school the attention and status…It’s racist student groups apparently. I never been to a sports event in my life. Stop charging me for it.
Towson makes it clear they charge athletic fees as part of tuition. It’s your money and you chose to come to towson and pay, so stop complaining.
No one should be complaining about this, look what athletics has done to Penn State.
The idea that no one should complain or try to change something when it is broken is complacent and pathetic. Maybe if enough people get together and speak out about this, we can reduce or discontinue the fee. In total, students pay $14.5 million in athletics fees per year. That is more than the budget of the entire college of business. By abolishing the fee, Towson could create a model of an economical public university that has a focus on excellence in education and not on “being part of the uproar.”
You guys clearly know more than pretty much every college and university in the world.
I guess it’d be cool if there were a justification for college sports other than “everybody does it.” I guess that colleges have athletics either because of tradition or in the vain hope of someday making money from them. Only a few large schools ever make any money from it. For instance, even College Park requires 20% of its athletics budget to come from student fees. When your only argument in support of something is that it is common, you should perhaps examine your position.
My argument is that I’m clearly not an expert, we are all just young inexperienced college students who really don’t know anything. Especially when it comes to running schools and athletic programs. Then there are all of the extremely smart people who run the most prestigious universities in the world with all of their knowledge and experience. They seem to think it’s a good idea, and I’d bet they’re all much smarter than you and have much more information about the costs and benefits. I’m not really sure what you’re basing your opinion on besides your extremely uninformed opinion, so I’m just going to agree with them.
Perhaps I’ve got a bit more experience or perspective than you, being 25 years old and paying my own way through college out of pocket. Enough experience to know that the people at the top are not often very much smarter than the rest of us. They’re just people. They may have access to information that the rest of us don’t, however.
It’s clear that you’re uninformed, and that’s nothing to be ashamed of, but don’t assume that I am as well. Many of the relevant facts to this debate can be found in Towson’s publicized budget, which I read a few weeks ago. The 2012 budget lays out $18 million for sports, more than it sets aside for 6 of the 7 academic colleges on campus. And $14.5 million of this is paid for by student fees; only $2.4 million comes in from ticket sales and donations. The remaining balance is paid for by transfers of other university funds. $8.5 million of the $18m budget goes to payroll for coaching staff, and the highest paid university employee is the basketball coach, who makes $275,000 per year. The Dean of Sciences makes $120,000 less than the basketball coach.
Seeing the above numbers laid out, I think a reasonable person would think “what has the administration been thinking?” We shouldn’t just assume that they’ve got it handled and pay our fees, we should demand to know why we’re paying them when the athletics department clearly provides the school no revenue or promise of future revenue. If athletics can bring in $2.4 million in revenue, Towson should only spend $2.4 million on athletics. Otherwise sports are a drain on the students’ pocketbooks. I don’t see how a student forced to pay that $400 each semester could support Towson athletics.
Reading the numbers from Towson, I thought that our parasitic athletics program was an isolated phenomenon, but reading College Park’s budget leads to the same conclusion. In fact, in College Park’s budget, they cite that 98 of the 122 universities in the NCAA football division are posting fiscal deficits even with assistance from student athletics fees. Look at the public employee salaries in most states and you’ll find that the many of the highest paid employees in the entire state are college football or basketball coaches. This is a widespread problem, and, again, we shouldn’t just assume that somebody real smart will take care of it. If they’ve got a good reason for the proliferation of non-profitable athletics programs, I am waiting to hear it. If they have some reasoning why somebody who tells kids to throw balls around is paid more than the state’s governor or the school’s president then I’d love to hear it.
If you all are unhappy with the athletic fees, just go to a university that doesn’t have them. There are plenty of liberal arts colleges on the East coast without athletic programs where I’m sure you will all be very happy.
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