Your Thoughts - "mandatory" fees associated with athletics

[El Paso Eagle]

With athletes having the ability to be paid and have jobs, and schools adding more and more special programs to support athletes while many are struggling and taking loans and working multiple jobs to pay for tuition. The transfer portal has shown there is less and less loyalty to "my" school (or others)

Should schools have to eliminate the "mandatory" fees associated with athletics?

With the "amateur" being removed from college sports, why should students be forced to subsidize? 

For the record, I think it is something that needs to go.

Edited June 6, 2022 by SteaminWillieBeamin
Edited out the political snark.

[DentonLurker]

Mandatory athletics fees are just wrong. Always have been, always will be. NIL doesn't even matter to me in this conversation. There's no reason a Biology student who cares about Med School only should ever be forced to pay for athletics. It should be 100% optional.

[Mean Green 93-98]

Without support from student fees, D1 athletics at UNT would promptly come to an end.  I imagine it would also lead to foreclosure of Apogee Stadium.

[SteaminWillieBeamin]

I always paid mandatory fees for a lot of things I never used - Rec center, the armadillo performance hall, pickup basketball courts, health center, etc etc. It's all a part of the larger education system. This is not a trade school or budget airline. You cannot a la carte you educational journey. 

[greenminer]

37 minutes ago, DentonLurker said:

Mandatory athletics fees are just wrong. Always have been, always will be. NIL doesn't even matter to me in this conversation. There's no reason a Biology student who cares about Med School only should ever be forced to pay for athletics. It should be 100% optional.

Timeless debate.  These schools are using athletics heavily to promote their brand.  Don't want to support athletics? You have options: a different school.

[keith]

I understand the sentiment and feel that the college athletics landscape will change, but there are more student-athletes (or athlete-students) that will see very little or nothing at all from NIL than those that make headlines.

When you choose to attend a university with such fees you are accepting them as a condition of attending, so they are really only "mandatory" in the same way that tuition is mandatory.  If someone doesn't want that type of college experience or expense, there are hundreds of other options (on-line, etc.).

[untjim1995]

2 minutes ago, greenminer said:

Timeless debate.  These schools are using athletics heavily to promote their brand.  Don't want to support athletics? You have options: a different school.

This is the correct answer. UTA or UTD are both great schools, academically. And they are cheaper. If that matters to you, they are there for your admission.

But UNT is a whole different animal when it comes to athletics. 98% don't care or actively loathe its existence. I never, ever believe that the athletics fee we get here is set in stone. But I sure hope it is. I'll never understand how college football in Texas can matter so much more than it does here. At the worst, we SHOULD be comparable to Texas Tech or UH just because of our size and history. Instead, we compare to UTSA and Texas State...that i-aa decision was just so awful that it didn't just give our own alumni someone else to follow and care about, it gave the students here over the years someone else to follow for decades. 

[meangreenfaninno]

18 minutes ago, untjim1995 said:

This is the correct answer. UTA or UTD are both great schools, academically. And they are cheaper. If that matters to you, they are there for your admission.

But the fact is none of the young people that care about being engaged socially want to go there.  Take UTA for instance.  That school used to have a vibrant campus and greek system etc.  It has become a suitcase college with no visible identity.  UNT has done a good job of making it more of a college experience and the growth of Denton has been good as well.   You really can stay in Denton over the weekends now unlike a few years ago when you had to head to Dallas to have fun.

[RBP79]

Do students still get free tickets to athletic events? Didn't the student body vote for these fees?

[emmitt01]

As a male student I never had a need for the on-campus clinic or its offerings.   I also feel I should have been able to pay library fees only when I needed to look something up.   Hell, while we're at it, I really only attended football and basketball games so I want a refund on the portion of my student fees that paid for golf, track, cross country, tennis and soccer.   

I mean, it's not as if I was signing up to attend a university that offered a total college experience and the fees were spelled out to me up front.  😏

 

*And, if my sarcasm didn't come through well enough, keep in mind that I fully intend to send one child through North Texas in about 4 years and two more through in about 10 years...fully expecting to pay the fees for every single thing North Texas has to offer.  

Edited June 6, 2022 by emmitt01

[GrandGreen]

Mandatory athletic fees are impossible to defend.   However, about 80% of D! teams would not exist without them.   

These fees are fully disclosed, so they should not be a surprise to students.     

[Rudy]

3 hours ago, Mean Green 93-98 said:

Without support from student fees, D1 athletics at UNT would promptly come to an end.  I imagine it would also lead to foreclosure of Apogee Stadium.

This

1 hour ago, emmitt01 said:

As a male student I never had a need for the on-campus clinic or its offerings.   I also feel I should have been able to pay library fees only when I needed to look something up.   Hell, while we're at it, I really only attended football and basketball games so I want a refund on the portion of my student fees that paid for golf, track, cross country, tennis and soccer.   

I mean, it's not as if I was signing up to attend a university that offered a total college experience and the fees were spelled out to me up front.  😏

 

*And, if my sarcasm didn't come through well enough, keep in mind that I fully intend to send one child through North Texas in about 4 years and two more through in about 10 years...fully expecting to pay the fees for every single thing North Texas has to offer.  

And this. 

[DentonLurker]

I love the “It is what it is” responses. The difference to me, between athletic fees and a library fee or a rec center fee is that athletic fees are literally requiring one student to pay so that another student doesn’t have to. With the other fees, the student who pays is the one who benefits if they choose to use the services. I get that it changes the model and would make athletics look different at a lot of schools, including UNT. That’s why I’ve always tried to get friends and family to donate to the MGSF. I would love to see a day where UNT didn’t have to make it mandatory because alums/Dentonites are choosing to support Athletics.

[El Paso Eagle]

4 hours ago, SteaminWillieBeamin said:

I always paid mandatory fees for a lot of things I never used - Rec center, the armadillo performance hall, pickup basketball courts, health center, etc etc. It's all a part of the larger education system. This is not a trade school or budget airline. You cannot a la carte you educational journey. 

However the different things you mentioned are for the most part available to all student. These are fees that the vast majority will never have an opportunity to use the resources they are helping to fund

[UNTLifer]

4 hours ago, emmitt01 said:

As a male student I never had a need for the on-campus clinic or its offerings.   I also feel I should have been able to pay library fees only when I needed to look something up.   Hell, while we're at it, I really only attended football and basketball games so I want a refund on the portion of my student fees that paid for golf, track, cross country, tennis and soccer.   

I mean, it's not as if I was signing up to attend a university that offered a total college experience and the fees were spelled out to me up front.  😏

 

*And, if my sarcasm didn't come through well enough, keep in mind that I fully intend to send one child through North Texas in about 4 years and two more through in about 10 years...fully expecting to pay the fees for every single thing North Texas has to offer.  

Bingo.

2 hours ago, El Paso Eagle said:

However the different things you mentioned are for the most part available to all student. These are fees that the vast majority will never have an opportunity to use the resources they are helping to fund

They receive "free" tickets so they can enjoy those resources.

[Cr1028]

13 hours ago, El Paso Eagle said:

However the different things you mentioned are for the most part available to all student. These are fees that the vast majority will never have an opportunity to use the resources they are helping to fund

I’m sure you can find another fee in here that isn’t to your benefit and you wish could be eliminated. 

https://sfs.unt.edu/explanation-fees

Some students don’t care about athletics and if they aren’t interested in paying toward their university having NCAA athletics programs, they are free to go to a school that has none and is all but invisible to the outside world.