OMAHA, Nebraska (AP) — In addition to looking to trim millions of dollars from the university system, the University of Nebraska is planning a $450 million renovation of the Cornhuskers’ football stadium in Lincoln. This has critics wondering if administrators are more concerned with athletics than academics.
Although academics at Nebraska and across the country agree that athletics is important for a Big Ten university, they believe that the funding plans’ disparities suggest that research and teaching are not as important as Nebraska’s football program.
According to Irene Mulvey, president of the college faculty advocacy group American Association of University Professors, “an institution has their priorities all wrong if they are putting zillions into athletics at the same time they are proposing cuts to academic programs and faculty.”
Professor of mathematics at Fairfield University in Connecticut Mulvey said that in order to guarantee that staff and programs at the university receive sufficient funding, it is the responsibility of state and university leaders to advocate for the university’s core academic mission to funders.
This fall, preliminary approval was granted for the costly renovation of Memorial Stadium, despite the University of Nebraska system, which consists of four campuses, facing a $58 million budget deficit that could result in staff and program cuts. This includes significant budget cuts at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, where faculty and staff have objected to the institution’s stated plans to discontinue its theater and geography departments as well as other humanities courses and its cybersecurity program.
The University of Nebraska-Omaha and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the system’s flagship campus and home of the Nebraska Cornhuskers, are also preparing to reduce their academic offerings in order to address budget deficits that are attributed to decreased enrollment, sluggish revenue growth, and inflation. Additionally, UNL has suggested slashing the funding for its Office of Diversity and Inclusion by over 70%.
The cuts are similar to those made at other universities across the nation, which have been singled out by Republican lawmakers in a fight that has targeted tenured faculty, humanities programs, college diversity initiatives, and even the ways in which colleges can teach and discuss race.
The academic challenges faced by college students coincide with a series of high-profile, high-dollar incidents that demonstrate the massive financial outflow to college athletics. This includes billion-dollar media contracts with athletic conferences that provide millions annually to their member schools, multimillion-dollar payouts to fired college football coaches, and unresolved legal cases that may result in a portion of the money being used to compensate college athletes.
According to William Avilés, a professor of political science at UNK, the optics of pursuing a nearly half-billion dollar stadium renovation while slashing academic programs “are awful.” As academic programs are being trimmed, the skyrocketing salaries of university administrators—such as the departing NU President’s $1 million yearly salary, which represents a nearly 40% increase over his predecessor—are equally concerning.
