Thanks for the link DT.
I'll move my comments here because they don't have anything to do with unionizing.
There are about 350 schools in Division 1. That ranges from massive flagship public universities to poor HBCUs to tiny private schools. There are a fair numbers of D1 schools with enrollment around 5, 6k. I believe in the last 7 years or so, about 10 schools have joined D1, while 1 is in the process of leaving.
The full list is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NCAA_Division_I_institutions
I think the bulk of my posts that would be useful for you are here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=519449&page=4
Ok so 350 D1 schools out of how many thousands of schools with athletic programs? And only a fraction of the D1 schools (or any schools with programs) actually make money on their programs...
You have raised some really good points, namely that the brand recognition that big athletic programs bring can't be bought and that alumni will tend to dote more donations on 'winning' schools.
Still - how may thousands of schools are chasing that kind of success futilely? As you mentioned before, there have been botched transitions to D1. I take it that those cases are probably outliers not indicative of the trend for D1 success. However, I take it virtually every school has athletics of some kind and while most won't aspire to D1 status, they will all spend lots of money on their programs.
My concern is not that athletics should go away or that they are pointless, rather that we (as a society) are coming to a place where we value athletics so much that there is a perception every school must have a competitive athletic program in whatever division they are in and should spend even more to 'keep up with the jone's'. Similarly, I am not at all against dorms, or nicer student services, but when colleges throw up multi-million dollar dorms that border on luxury apartments because other schools are doing so, the enterprise becomes counter-productive at some point.
Instead of spending money on athletic programs or new dorms* with very limited returns to the school educationally, they could (and should, IMO) spend that money on new facilities for better instruction or paying more for higher-caliber professors. While having a D1 football program can bring in more higher-caliber students, so too can being a higher-ranked university in various academic disciplines.
For non-profits and state institutions in particular, they should focus more on providing the best education they can manage and not even on necessarily attracting the best students in the first place. Don't get me wrong, I understand why it's important to have good students. But if you are a non-profit or a state run school, your #1 priority should be providing the best education you can to everyone as cheaply as you can. I believe that providing a better education will itself attract better students and can also lead to higher alumni donations.
And of course, I'm not saying that even D1 schools with massively expensive programs don't focus on education. However, where an institution spends it's resources are indicative of that institutions priorities. While I'm sure that those schools still spend the majority of their resources on education, my worry is that we're heading to a place where the share that goes over to athletics or fancy dorms will increase untenable levels. Tuition is already in record territory and I'm opposed to any trends that continue that.
When I was on the board at my community college, that was something I always had to fight for - to fight against the urge to spend on things that would have marginal returns to the educational value. I was lucky in that my particular board was weary of spending money but that isn't the case everywhere and even at my school the urge was there to buy new things that weren't necessary. Another thing that I found out rather quickly was how terrible (at least state-funded schools) were at saving for a rainy day. I understand that a lot of the funding they got from the state was earmarked for certain projects, but tuition dollars and local taxes were not. (some taxes were levies for specific projects, however) Despite being in Illinois with a dysfunctional state government and imploding budgets, schools simply weren't saving their cash. It seemed to burn a hole in their pockets such that when I heard some community colleges were building dorms, I thought, WTF, and so on. The urge to compete athletically to attract 'better students' certainly played a part there and was regrettable.
*I'm using 'dorms' to mean all the kinds of things (like new swimming pools, better gyms, etc) that schools tend to lavish money on. Sure, most of them are necessary but it seems to be the trend that schools spend more to have nicer things to compete with other schools who are also building nicer things.