Your points are on target, George, but to my mind the most obscene thing about student fees is the way many institutions use them to fund big-time athletic programs. And when I say fund, I mean fund.

It took the Indy Star dozens of FOIAs to put together this fascinating database of NCAA athletic departments for 2004-05.

From it you can gleen such nuggets as UNCC spending $10 million on athletics, $6 million of which comes from student fees. The next highest source of revenue is conference TV money and NCAA payouts at $1.2 million. Actual ticket sales and contributions from boosters only total about $675,000 each.

Similar deal at App State, $7.6 million budget, $4.3m. of which is student fees. (ASU still ran about $375K in the red.)

For comparison, UNC’s huge $54 million athletic program only claimed about $2.4 million in student fees — $2.4 million too much, but something is out of whack within the UNC System. Over at Cow College, Moo U’s $35 million program took $2.3 million in student fees, while running about $1.2 million in the red. Incidentally, both UNC and NCSU lost about $1.1 million each on their women’s basketball teams.

Anyway, you get the big picture. Maybe students and parents really do want to underwrite athletics to this extent. Or maybe they have no idea where the money is going.