An out of control athletic department that is not the Ducks? Joe Nocera has the report in the NYT.
Tyler Kingkade has the $65.5M news from LSU: LSU Faces Dramatic Budget Cuts While It Builds An Expensive Lounging Pool. And you thought Robin Holmes was out of control?
Thanks to my vigilant and ever-optimistic readers for the links.
The budget cutters in Louisiana (who truly have a frightful situation) will say that if LSU can afford this expensive lazy river, then they can afford budget cuts.
LSU will claim, somewhat rightly, that the students voted and are paying for the lazy river.
However, it may well be that LSU encouraged the students to vote for this. That is what happened at UO — the admin was clearly promoting the new EMU, rec facilities.
So when the state frowns upon tuition increases, to make up for the sorry UO budget situation, the UO admin is not entirely blameless.
They are gambling that expensive amenities will attract enough out of state students to help the budget. Ditto with trying to expand the student body — they are gambling that higher enrollment will not lead to correspondingly higher expenses shortly down the line.
This doesn’t seem to be working very well, does it?
So let’s all go back to being obsessed about the greedy Ducks, just as the public is obsessed about the greedy PERS members, especially us Tier 1 folks.
Both equally pointless but a pleasant diversion from figuring out how to solve the respective problems? (UO faces both problems, insufficient revenue, now exacerbated by big increases in PERS costs coming in 2017.)
(It seems that Phil Knight may have found the perfect method to taunt the UO faculty until we go completely bonkers.)
Where to look for savings to get UO through? I have my own pet hobby horse, what is yours?
Rutgers would have been better off playing the likes of Princeton and Lehigh. College Avenue New Brunswick and fraternity row are alcohol-drenched on football Saturdays, just like Eugene and countless other Bigtime U college towns. It didn’t have to be that way. Insecure car dealer and real estate alums are a wrecking ball.
Question, doesn’t LSU risk losing accreditation if their bond rating drops? I’m pretty sure that is the case, and if so, then why are they spending ANY amount of money on amenities, if the academic side risks losing both state and federal tax revenues? Talk about putting lipstick on a pig…..