Yes, yes, and yes. They are expected to do this at many schools. In the form of grants, or in numbers of students taking their classes, or alumni donations. And those are academic departments.
College sports, in theory, exist to allow students to have fun, get exercise, learn leadership, etc. I.e. the D3 model. What they have become in D1 is not that. So, why are universities paying huge amounts for these extra-curriculars that are not the money sports?
Nice try, but no.
While an individual lab or dept may apply for grants, get them, and then use the money for basic research, this is not recorded as revenue. And no research facility turns a profit, nor are they expected to. In almost all cases, researchers are also required forfeit any new IP to the university, which pushes the profit motive even further away.
Donor-directed funds to support basic research or help with a capital campaign are also not recorded as revenue. And no donor seeks capital appreciation or a paid dividend from their donation. If they did, it would not be a donation!
Tuition is recorded as revenue, since services are provided in exchange for payment. But academic departments aren’t expected to turn a profit based on classroom education…what would be the mechanism for doing so?
The NFL’s and NBA’s decision to outsource their minor leagues, along with the associated revenue and profits, to colleges across the country has been an absolute bonanza for the schools. But with no obligation to treat the participating athletes as anything but students and seeking to protect their increasingly large, media-driven revenue stream, the schools created a fig leag called the NCAA. The NCAA in turn created 10,000,000 rules and multiple divisions to ensure the free labor and subjugation of the students, into perpetuity.
Because we’ve all grown up watching college football and basketball become bigger and bigger businesses ie major revenue and income generators, and because the colleges have heavily promoted the virtue of such arrangements for so long, it seems normal to us to expect all college sports to generate revenue and turn a profit if they can.
But capitalism has never been a part of academia and looking at the way the non-athletic parts of the university operate make that clear.
The anomaly that is the NCAA is rapidly deteriorating right now because its foundational principle was always unstable, based on the lie that college students participating in intercollegiate athletics are nothing more than students, while the parts of the university that sponsor and oversee them are righteous, profit-seeking enterprises.
Colleges do not exist to generate profits.
Student-athletes are employees.
The NCAA is a corrupt cartel.
The courts are just now righting the long-standing problems in college athletics.
So tell your sons to go ahead and post their offers on social media if they want. They have the freedom and agency to do so, take advantage.