Defenders of the UW’s new 1/4 billion dollar football stadium (added to the 1 billion Seattle spent for Seahawks Stadium) claim that this public money is well spent because it creates construction jobs. I do not see how this can be true. There is a huge difference between spending public dollars on infrastructure that has long term returns as income, and spending it on a frivolity like Husky stadium. Which so you think will make Washington State a more competitive element in the global economy, light rail or private boxes on Montlake?
Husky stadium is not an infrastructure project. It is an egregious use of public money in bad times to create an amusement park. That park will not even support the UW students. The recent Bloomberg report, like lots of other Husky hype, falsely reported that UW students do not pay an athletic fee. That is true ONLY if you mean that the students do not directly subsidize the UW’s pro sports activities. Our students pay a heft athletic fee for the IMA and other “recreational” sports.
In my opinion, only rational view of the Huskies .. and their ilk at other Division 1 campuses ‘…., is that they are businesses owned by the campus but run independently of the campus’s tax payer funded role as place for teaching and research.
If we can run Husky Inc,, then why shouldn’t we run other profit making endeavors under the Husky Brand? As a Med School type, I have wondered why we call our health business “UW Medicine?” Wouldn’t Husky Health do better? Or, even better, given the success of such “non profits” as Western Governors University, why not split off an online diploma mill and all it “Husky University?:”
The athletic department may already have pioneered the idea od a “Husky University.” A post on The Ave (below) shows that Husky U already ranks in the top 25 of academic athletic programs .. way above Harvard!
The UW Athletic Program ranked # 11 in academic success of our athletes ….
Pretty good! … Harvard only ranked 114! Stanford, UNC, Georgetown,Notre Dame, Penn State, UCLA, Michigan, Oregon, and Princeton* beat us. We easily beat the Air Force Academy and USC at 73 and 23!
Washington State, the Cougars, di really bad …. 124!
Harvard only ranked 114!