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I am not aware of any feedback system currently in place. If I can remember the next time I'm on campus, I will ask around. I've always been in favor of putting the fraternities and sororities to work on some of the basic projects.
Another broke ass state going into more debt in order to pay for sports, recreation and administrators offices. As with University of Oregon going into debt to build the most expensive basketball arena in the country, and the idiot students who continue to see their tuition going up to attend a less than mediocre school and do nothing about it, all so that private contractors and Wall Street bankers can make money on the deal, the same nonsense is being accomplished in WV. Man, we really are a bunch of USAAmericans....
You do know that the oregon Bball arena was paid for almost entirely by Phil Knight of Nike and the remainder came from private donors...
Also, the Marshall athletic facilities are being paid for by private donors as well...
don't rant just to rant.
No it was NOT paid for almost entirely by Phil Knight. The total amount was $250 million, he donated about $30 million. OR picked up the rest. And maybe you didn't read the OP which stated the amount of WV public debt that these facilities are going to cost. Too much cheerleading and not enough common sense is taking place with universities....
These facilities aren't all a part of athletics. All of the athletic construction sans the new football suites (which are being paid through preorders) are being paid for by the Vision Campaign, which is a fund-raising effort by the athletic department for the new projects. All money going to the vision campaign is in the form of private donations. The public funds are going to infrastructure improvements and new classroom and research facilities.
Also, taking out bonds isn't a bad way to get things accomplished. People do it all the time in the form of auto and home loans. There is a difference between bad debt and smart debt and that difference is the ability to pay it off. And Marshall will be able to pay this off comfortably.
These new facilities are necessary for growth and without them, Marshall would not be able to compete for students with the WVU, OSU, and Kentuckys of the world.
These facilities aren't all a part of athletics. All of the athletic construction sans the new football suites (which are being paid through preorders) are being paid for by the Vision Campaign, which is a fund-raising effort by the athletic department for the new projects. All money going to the vision campaign is in the form of private donations. The public funds are going to infrastructure improvements and new classroom and research facilities.
Also, taking out bonds isn't a bad way to get things accomplished. People do it all the time in the form of auto and home loans. There is a difference between bad debt and smart debt and that difference is the ability to pay it off. And Marshall will be able to pay this off comfortably.
These new facilities are necessary for growth and without them, Marshall would not be able to compete for students with the WVU, OSU, and Kentuckys of the world.
As for Oregon's new arena, meh...
Sorry, but all the public debt that ANY university is taking out is backed by student loans and their subsequent interest payments. The idea that there is such a thing as "good" debt when student loans top over a trillion dollars is plain idiotic. If you want to do something "smart," then raise taxes in order to cover the cost of any improvements which a university wants. No one will go for that, so instead, they do the debt route, which makes the cost of buying the product much more expensive.
The reasons that MU and most universities are doing this are legion. First, the biggest contributors to state legislatures are construction firms and Wall Street investment houses. Construction firms get the bids for public building, due to the fact that they can't find any private work. That's when their bribes, sorry, their political contributions, come into play. Second, Wall Street makes money by selling the bonds, and by investing in those bonds as well. That's why over the past two decades, Wall Street and namely John Boehner worked so hard to get rid of basic consumer protection for student loans, in order to make sure that there would be no bankruptcy protection for students if they cannot find a job and pay their debt. The reasoning for getting rid of that basic protection was BS, student loans were no more of a risk of default than were any other form of debt. But that bill of goods was sold to the public and now they're facing the folly of being that stupid.
All of this building and construction at universities is being done now because the student loan bubble is popping. Recently, the FED came out with data that showed that student loans 90) days in arrears stands officially at 12%. The real rate is closer to 25%, because students can defer default for two years. But of course the interest keeps piling on, if you can't make the payments when you're 40k in the hole, what the hell makes you think that you can make it at 60k. These are numbers which are reminiscent of the popping of the subprime bubble, and the attendant collapse of real estate. Shills for both WS and construction firms are always trying to make the case for increased debt as the "way to go." Of course, when you see the huge amount of debt which US universities carry, and the inability of students to attend any public university, including MU, without taking out ten of thousands of dollars in loans, it makes that argument just plain stupid.
So tell us, since you seem to think that debt is "the way to go," what is the amount of building debt MU is currently carrying, what the average debt load for recent graduates, not those that graduated 20 years ago who are close to paying it off, but those most recent grads, and how much the debt load is going to cost MU over the next 20 years, and how will it be paid off. Make the argument, with real numbers, that this amount of debt is "good."
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