The Chronicle‘s Ronnie Turner reports that HCC is considering an unnecessary extravagance:
The Houston Community College System board of trustees will vote Tuesday on a student fee that would enable it to add an intramural athletic program, with the possibility of elevating it to an intercollegiate program in the future.
If the fee is approved, students would pay an extra $6 per semester, effective in the spring of 2009, to fund the intramural program, which would begin this fall. HCC chancellor Mary S. Spangler estimates that the fee would bring in an additional $250,000 per semester, money that would be split among five of the HCCS campuses: Central, Northeast, Northwest, Southeast and Southwest. She said that the other campus, Coleman College for Health Sciences, probably would not have a program because of its lack of facilities.
[snip]
Despite the possible financial strain an athletic program would bring, Spangler sees benefits in having one.
“The more activities that you can engage students in at the college, research shows the more likely students are to be engaged to stay in their classes and to move from one semester to the other towards their goal,” she said. “There are a number of different kinds of things to do that: student government, athletics, working at the college; those kinds of things keep them involved.”
Obviously, HCC’s “leadership” really wants intercollegiate athletics.
Why this is a good idea for HCC, given its mission, is far less clear.
UPDATE (07/02/08): HCC’s board of trustees voted unanimously to start the intramural athletics program (and almost certainly believes it will lead to bigger things).
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