Why Are Universities Non-Profit for Tax Purposes?

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Sports Illustrated 
Each school will receive $135 million as a result of the "capital deal" in addition to the $80 to $100 million each school receives year from TV rights. 

Exactly why should these universities be non-profit? This "capital deal" -- selling assets that were originally paid for by taxpayers -- is as money grubbing a deal as any private sector company would make. Football is hardly a key academic activity. Universities also have endowments, sometimes worth billions, that also receive preferential tax treatment. 

Before anyone says, "universities are engaged in public service," so was my company WeatherData, Inc. (we directly saved hundreds of lives) but the government wouldn't let us be non-profit. 

Below are comments regarding last week's 60 Minutes' weekly "Trump is evil" report that he allegedly shut down breast cancer research.
This "overselling" over university research potential is, unfortunately, quite common in general and in weather science in particular as we've discussed before. There should be some sort of penalty for this overselling but it only seems to get worse as the years progress. 

It may be that it made sense for universities to be non-profit 50+ years ago but I don't believe that should continue to be the case.

Comments are welcome. 

Comments

  1. Old Retired GuyNovember 15, 2025 at 8:33 AM

    I don't know if this is universally true, but most states treat their university athletic programs as separate from the educational part and don't directly subsidize athletics. Though this sounds strange as many are reported to lose money.

    ReplyDelete

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