TPO1: Do you agree or disagree with the following statement?
At universities and colleges, sports and social activities are just as important as classes and libraries and should receive equal financial support.
It is asserted that at universities and colleges, sports and social activities are just as significant as classes and libraries and should receive equal financial support. Sports and social activities are, indeed, beneficial/conducive to students’ all-round development. Universities and colleges can also benefit from funding such activities. Nevertheless, I reckon that classes and libraries should be the funding priorities for universities and colleges in the face of scarcity of financial sources.
First of all, sports promote health, boost self-confidence and facilitate team spirit. With all of these benefits that come from physical activities, students will be more likely to succeed in tasks off the playing field. According to the National Behavioral Research Center (NBRC), students who regularly participate in physical activities are more likely to achieve higher GPA than those who do not participate in sports activities at all, which implies a positive association between sports activities and academic achievement. Moreover, participating in social activities can foster students’ communication skills, which are hard to teach in classes but essential to students when they go to the society after their graduation. It is occasionally read from the press that high-GPA college graduates fail to find jobs to make a living because they cannot communicate effectively and efficiently. Universities and colleges should certainly give concern and take proper actions to improve students’ social skills.
Second, universities and colleges can also benefit from funding students’ sports activities by, for example, hiring famous coaches and upgrading training facilities. Universities and colleges may receive more media exposure when they have good sports teams, which will, in return, increase their popularities and thus augment the number of applicants and their revenue. Besides, a good sports team will usually enhance students’ sense of belonging and pride.
Despite the benefits of sports and social activities, it is still inappropriate to furnish equal financial support to these activities as to classes and libraries when confronting financial constraint, which is a common issue to most of universities and colleges, if not all. Teaching quality and research support should always be universities’ major focus and there seems to me no alternatives to reconcile under-investment problem in these areas. For example, it is hard to teach students gene editing technique without laboratory apparatus for biology class; it is bizarre/eccentric to show students how to use STATA to dig useful information from a large seemingly irregular dataset without purchasing financial data sources for econometrics class. Furthermore, instead of building a stadium for training and match, universities and colleges can, for instance, rent public stadium; instead of supporting students to go aboard to visit multi-national corporations, universities and colleges can arrange internships for students in local companies.
In conclusion, centering on teaching and research fulfills the prime goal of universities and colleges. Only when the needs of teaching and research are satisfied, should universities and colleges consider funding other non-academic related activities such as sports and social activities. 作者: 掬乐 时间: 2017-9-26 18:33:02
