Money Just Keeps Flowing On College Campuses
Go ahead, UNL, and build your new $155 million athletic facility at no cost to the beleaguered taxpayer!
Of course it’s a huge pile of cash, but higher education is a lot different from what people my age experienced when we started in the mid 50s.
I knew a guy living in the dorm on the Lincoln campus who told me he was contemplating a crime so he would be sent to prison and have a more spacious room and a lot better meals.
Now kids are housed in luxurious apartments for four with their own bathrooms and kitchens and TV-equipped living rooms, roof gardens and hammocks. (See: House Beautiful, Aug. 23, 2019).
Universities have constructed extraordinary recreational facilities for ordinary students with climbing walls, aquatic centers, squash and racquetball courts, massage parlors and juice bars.
The competition for such posh quarters has led to ratings, just like for medical and law schools. If you’re skeptical, look at the University of Texas at San Antonio or Colorado State and even at the University of Chicago!
And while we’re at it, I endorse the California proposal to pay varsity athletes so we stop being hypocrites about what a huge business college football is at least. How about paying the players 10 percent of what the head coach makes? It’s no secret that Urban Meyer at Ohio State made over $8 million last year and Scott Frost got $5 million, e.g.
This may be one of those O Street rumors, but they’re saying a competition is on between the engineering and architecture schools at UNL to design a humongous geodesic dome which will stretch from south of the Sheldon Art Gallery on R Street over Memorial Stadium and end just north of the new athletic facility.
It could shelter fans, coaches, hot dog vendors and players from the elements and be the envy of the entire NCAA. It, too, would be paid for with private donations with naming rights going to anyone giving more than $60 million. Think that’s far-fetched? Compare plans for a dome covering the total Houghton College campus near Buffalo, N.Y., at $84 million.
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