Subject: Re: Paying off National Debt
Perhaps it was peculiar to AZ, but a BIG driver was sports because sports brings in money. When I was at the UofA, instead of funding some student-oriented things, they built skyboxes for the football stadium. Sometime in the last decade there was a row about closing the College of Music to fund some other sports thing (I don't recall the details now). It seems everything is subservient to the NCAA.

Depends on the school; in the Big Ten most of the sports facilities are funded through private donations and/or special fees tacked on to tuition. One of the parts of the "arms race" is the rush to joint the conferences with the biggest media footprints (and resulting $$$ contracts from the streaming services and networks). That's the reason why the Big Ten just absorbed a bunch of Pac-12 schools.

And at the UofA, professors often regarding teaching as a nuisance. They didn't get evaluated on their teaching, they were evaluated on research dollars and publications. As a grad student, I saw a bit more of the inner workings of this than an undergrad student would. Professors need grad students to assist in their research, and "secrets" can be revealed.

Graduate School in STEM fields, especially engineering, is today's version of indentured servitude. Over the course of my masters' and Ph.D. programs I worked 7 days a week with very little time off and 80-90 hour weeks were the norm. It's a mentally exhausting grind that was also the greatest learning experience of my life...but boy, do you earn it. I had thoughts of becoming a professor until I saw just how much hustling for research money you had to do...