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"Unvarnished." (Phi Beta Cons)
"Splendidly splenetic." (Culture Industry)
"Except for University Diaries, most academic blogs are tedious."
(Rate Your Students)
"I think of Soltan as the Maureen Dowd of the blogosphere,
except that Maureen Dowd is kind of a wrecking ball of a writer,
and Soltan isn't. For the life of me, I can't figure out her
politics, but she's pretty fabulous, so who gives a damn?"
(Tenured Radical)

Monday, October 01, 2007

Commentary Around Florida
In Response to the Budget-
and Education-Destroying
Football Stadium Just Approved
by the Trustees of a University
With Very Little Budget and
Very Weak Academics





'[At] FAU, where trustees have given provisional approval for a 30,000-seat football stadium, more money for academic programs [is what's needed]...

FAU's stadium largely is driven by the university's ill-advised jump to the National Collegiate Athletic Association's top division, I-A. Yet nearly half of I-A schools lose an average of $2.5 million a year on football, reports the News & Observer of Raleigh. No Division II school makes a profit on athletics, evidenced in the $745,000 average deficit for football.

Rather than making money, college football is costing money - including higher student fees, often with students' approval. The schools' motivations range from enhancing the college experience by providing more social activity and sense of community, as at traditionally commuter FAU, to attracting more and better students. Those dividends are hard to measure.

...[A]dd the budget cuts pending in a legislative special session, and the determination to move ahead with a stadium on the Boca Raton campus seems all the more inadvisable.

...Officials say the university "is proceeding cautiously and prudently to develop an appropriate, conservative, feasible plan." FAU's feasibility study, however, assumes not only operating revenue and $700,000 from naming rights, but $750,000 in corporate and community fund-raising annually for at least 10 years. Before signing off on any athletic deal, in an academic environment in which students are not always the priority, FAU trustees must ensure that it all will be done for, not paid for by, students.'


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'...[I] have a radical suggestion for FAU and every other university ... [W]here to allocate limited resources? Where should they spend [large sums of money]? I propose they... set up a large scholarship fund that would give significant scholarships to students majoring in math and science. America is not producing enough math and science majors. America is producing enough football and basketball players.

With this money plus the scholarship money now going to football and basketball players, the school could provide a $10,000 annual scholarship to between 300 and 600 students annually, depending on the earning of the endowment fund.

Florida and Palm Beach County are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to attract high-level science jobs to the area. Maybe FAU could work in that same direction ...'



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'...FAU President Frank Brogan is selling a men's football stadium under the guise of an "Innovation Village," a hub of sports, student housing and retail to create a "traditional American college experience." Don't buy it. The true modern college experience should be in the classrooms on the other side of campus. ...'