Athletics Boosters Rankle College Faculty Members

As several big universities seek big private donations to finance new sports programs, many faculty members complain that scholarship is getting short shrift, reports The Chronicle of Higher Education.

As part of a series of articles on athletics and fund raising, the newspaper focuses on the University of Oregon at Eugene, which recently received $100-million for athletics from Philip H. Knight, Nike’s founder, and which named another major sports booster, Patrick J. Kilkenny, to serve as its athletics director.

Sports teams at the university have responded to such attention: The university is one of only a few in the country whose athletics department generates enough money to sustain itself.

However, 92 faculty members signed a newspaper opinion article in January accusing Oregon of putting too much emphasis on improving the sports team at the expense of education. Among other things, they noted that 40 percent of the money raised for its current $600-million capital campaign will be spent on sports.

The article is part of a series in The Chronicle about the increasing power of sports donors. The series includes an interactive database with figures from 64 big athletics departments and online conversations about what motivates sports donors.

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