We’ve all heard about the luxurious football locker rooms at many campuses and how alumni donations earmarked for sports are supposed to somehow trickle down (up?) to academic programs.
This excellent–if distressing–post at HigherEdWatch.org about the fat donations/fat tax deductions for university athletic donors will make you wonder what all that money(over $1 billion per year!) could do if those colleges used it to, say, sponsor scholarships, hire professors, build labs, expand graduate programs, etc.
Here’s a bit from the post:
College officials generally argue that increased spending on athletics, and in turn winning sports teams and increased school visibility, translate into satisfied alumni and more donations for the school overall. Unfortunately, this “happy alumni” hypothesis doesn’t appear to hold true. Studies of alumni giving have found that winning sports teams don’t have a significant effect on colleges—and even in situations when donations do increase, they are typically athletic donations, not general academic donations.
Rah rah.
Should sports donors get tax deductions for giving big bucks to the teams of their choice? I’m guessing the view from the sky box is different than the view from those looking for academic scholarships.
