11. Should universities finance students' sports activities equally as libraries?

The main responsibility of a university is to develop a student's academic ability. While physical health is an important prerequisite for mental health and academic achievement, sports should play a comparatively small role in college student's lives.

Since a student's main activity outside of the classroom is studying, occupying from four to eight hours of their day, a peaceful studying environment plays an important role in a student's academic development. College dorm rooms can have up to eight students sleeping in one small room and are not good environments for students to study in. To provide excellent studying environments for their students, universities must build large libraries designed to accommodate students as well as books. Since sports should occupy a much smaller part of the student's time, perhaps only an hour a day, sports facilities need not be as extensive or well-equipped as libraries.

In addition to the costs of building adequate library faculties, a university must also pay every year to keep its collection well organized and up-to-date.

The goal of every university library should be to have the most current books and materials its students need in order to study and do cutting edge research. The larger the student body, the more comprehensive a library's collection must be. A well-trained staff must also care for the materials and help the students.

Continuing costs for sports, on the other hand, are relatively low, requiring only a few part-time staff and maintenance routines. For the most part, students are happy to organize their own sporting events and exercise routines quite independently of the school.

Although a student's health is critical to their academic success, the investment that a school needs to make to ensure a physically fit student body is relatively small. Considering that the main mission of the school is to develop a student's mind and not their body, the school should put more of its resources into its libraries and not its sports activities.