Some university systems – Alaska’s, Hawaii’s, Nevada’s – are hopelessly mired in go-nowhereism and that’s for a lot of reasons and that’s not going to change.
The University of Nebraska system is like this, even though its chancellor insists the place trembles on the brink of being “a leading urban metropolitan institution.”
They don’t much cotton to academics in those parts, infinitely preferring sports. Sports gets gobs of money that other universities would use for instructors and classrooms and all.
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Consider the new cost-overrun and firmly in the red arena on the Omaha campus.
Although there’s a very nice, almost brand new, arena just down the road, and although wee Omaha already has too many arenas hemorrhaging money (one of them’s well on its way to bankrupting a town), UNO announced that building another new arena was imperative and we swear it’ll pay for itself right off the bat! Won’t need to use university funds, or soak students, or anything.
But stupid is as stupid does, and they’re covering their big losses on the thing with university funds, and that’s going to continue indefinitely. So you see how the sludge happens: Stupid sports-obsessed schools never get out from under their sports obsession.
But they don’t want to. Since they don’t see the point of intellectuality, what else would they do with their money?
September 10th, 2016 at 5:17PM
it’s pathetic and getting worse,the hockey team was fine in the arena space 10 mins away downtown and no one really goes to their other team’s games, absurd really that they are even in Div 1 sports given the size/population of the school and that everyone trucks on over to Lincoln if they want to see the spectacle of what really big money sports are like.
September 10th, 2016 at 6:07PM
dmf: I suspected that what you said was the case; good to get it confirmed.
September 11th, 2016 at 8:15AM
sure, as you might imagine the whole place has a bit of an inferiority complex in relation to the mothership of husker-nation, another sad local case there is Creighton who also just made the leap (of faith) up to join the withering on the vine Big East so more bad news in the making.