On Academics and Athletics
The Faculty Senate at UW-Madison is a very quiet place. We meet monthly for about two hours and while the agenda is packed, hardly anyone asks questions or makes impassioned speeches (present company excluded, of course). But on one issue, you can count on professors to speak up: athletics. More specifically, the money paid to coaches and staff on campus invokes more vehemence and animosity from my colleagues than any other issue I've seen brought to the forefront. I suspect the same is true at other schools. For it's fairly uniformly the case that salaries in athletics are far higher than those in academics and rise much, much faster. But of course, you might say. And how silly, Sara, to doubt that this is not only a good thing, but a smart thing! For as we all know, athletics brings money and needed attention to universities, generates revenue that benefits the entire institution, and more than pays for itself. In fact, people who care about financial aid ought to b...