To those who left comments on my letter, I felt I needed to respond. I am sorry to disappoint you, but I do, and did know that the athletics department and the academic department are kept completely separate.
The point of the article was simply this: if the athletics department has $100 million to spend on Commonwealth Stadium, then we should be able to pay our professors and staff.
I have to ask, how anybody can think it is responsible to waste, YES WASTE, millions on a football team, who quite frankly would struggle against the cheerleaders from my high school, when people are losing their jobs and we as students are losing educators.
I am simply advocating for this: in times of economic stress, the university should divert funds from the athletic department to the academic.
We are first and foremost a place of education and for us to place the needs of sports above those of our education is abhorrent at best. It all boils down to this — whether you’re athletics, academics, dining services or housing: “the University of Kentucky” is stamped across your paycheck.
We as moral individuals should not let fancy accounting and sleight of hand tactics hoard funding for a handful of students while the masses are left scrounging for the scraps.
Thomas Kelsay is a sustainable agriculture junior. Email opinions@kykernel.com
Thomas, you still don’t get it. Since the university and athletic are separate entities financially, they DO NOT have to give the university millions of dollars. UK should be able to pay their professors, but it’s not because the athletic department has $100 million to spend on Commonwealth Stadium. Now, UK athletics has agreed to generously donated 65 million dollars to fund 2/3 the cost of a new academic science building which will be complete in 2015. But, they didn’t have to do that. They’ve done so because we all wear ‘KENTUCKY’ across our chests.
Actually TJ, Academics is getting 2/3 of one building paid for and 100% of another building paid for in order to spend $110m on Athletics. So it comes out to about $165m on the academic side and $110m for athletics. Considering it all comes back to TV money, it’s fine.
But how about this Thomas? and others who blindly side with these worthwhile professors who complain about tight budgets and no raises for the last 5 years. When will these professors take responsibility for their own lack of progress in their fields?
The economy over the last 5 yrs was as bad as it has been in the last 60 yrs. Be glad they still had jobs.
And lets not get to quick to attack the athletics side of things; athletics is about 1/10 the budget of a University like UK. That’s a high profile 10%, so these jaded and tired professors want to keep status quo in their fields by doing no groundbreaking work to stand out on their own. They are sad that the nation is highly interested in sports and that there isn’t 24/7 coverage and 6 national channels dedicated to academic achievement as a form of entertainment. Why aren’t these professors and departments thinking out of the box in order to engage high school seniors? Why aren’t their specific classes being feature in academic magazines as highly respected in the way that they are approaching teaching these kids? Instead, they want to sit back, assign the same books each semester that they have been assigning for the last 15 yrs. Show up to class, repeat the same lessons in the same way over and over again. Assign some blase homework (graded by a TA), same testing methods, yada yada yada.
Instead, they would rather conduct their careers by rote. Never standing out, marking time by showing up and expecting tenure in “x” amount of years and raises along the way no matter what. Have they taken it upon themselves to go to the local high schools and recruit? At all? Have they researched transcripts and made a priority to approach these kids in order to talk to them that they want them in their classes? To increase their class size? Are they being themselves pursued by other Universities because of their abilities? Let’s not overlook the fact that Athletics at a State University automatically creates interest for the kids who grow up in the state and then choose UK in part just because they are UK fans. Or when push comes to shove for a kid with the choice between Morehead, WKU, EKU and UK all the decisions based on the high profile that the Athletics department perpetuates.
Many Universities athletic departments try to skirt the amount of tuition given back to academics by granting instate tuition to out of state recruits. UK athletics pays full tuition for each and every scholarship handed out. And fortunately for all these lazy, sit on their butts and collect a pay check professors, is the single best marketing tool that each one of them possesses. Each athletic team goes out and recruits athletes from across the country to come to UK. In the sports that don’t likely have professional careers to follow, the process probably goes like this: [California recruit:] UK offered me a scholarship. Well, what kind of school is that? What degrees to they offer? Where do their academic programs rank? What does the campus look like? What type of research does my chosen field participate in? What type of post graduate job placement can I get? What teachers are breaking ground in their fields? What separates these professors from UCLA, USC and Stanford?
If, this full scholarship is accepted then that seed is planted in others around that student athletes circle in California. UK then has a chance academically to stand out to locals in that area by how they educate and change perception that wasn’t their in California before.
What are these professors doing with their 90% of University funds to capitalize on the reach that athletics gives with their 10% self generated funding? Tell me! What are they doing to increase the national foot print that Athletics have given them? Instead, they want to sit back and rant and rave about their lack of raises or loss of jobs because they didn’t stand out for the previous 20 yrs. Well, nobody from another University came knocking on their doors to poach them because the stood out among their colleagues. So, by all means, give that person a raise amid the countries worst financial crisis in the last 60 yrs!
What did these departments do for the last 15-20 yrs when these building started falling behind in terms of technology? Did they pull back on the budget reigns and put a plan into place to upgrade the technology? Or, did they hand raises and tenure out and celebrate with each other for another fine year of doing nothing to advance the University profile? Yes? Well then, there is the answer. It might have been better had they eased up on automatic raises and said , “Hey, instead of these raises for average work, lets hold off on that and upgrade our technology so we can get ahead of the curve looking forward.”