By Robert M. Davis

ESPN TV contracts, clothing apparel, ticket sales, etc. There are countless revenue-generating sources from which collegiate athletics derive operational budgets. As much money as college athletic programs produce, there are also substantial costs associated with running these programs.

When expenses are greater than revenue, this results in what is known as a budget shortfall. Each of Virginia’s public colleges and universities operated athletic programs with a deficit in 2011 (most recent data available), according to a database of college athletic finances produced by USAToday. Despite all available resources, costs are greater than revenues.

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Davis is a master of public administration graduate from the Center for Public Administration and Policy at Virginia Tech.

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By Frank Beamer

As many of you know, I grew up in the wonderful little community of Fancy Gap. For those of you not familiar with my hometown, it is nestled atop the Blue Ridge Mountains in rural Carroll County not too far from the North Carolina border.

Fortunately for me and my brother and sister, we grew up in a home where getting an education was not a question, but a quest. Our mother, Herma, taught for 30 years in the public school system and inspired us to read and achieve.

I was fortunate enough to receive an athletic scholarship to attend college, but I knew I had to continue my education even if I had not been a student-athlete. That was more than 50 years ago. Today, further education beyond high school is even more important. By 2020, 60 percent of all jobs in America, and in Virginia, will require education and training beyond that provided by a simple high school diploma.

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Beamer is the head coach of the Virginia Tech football team.

By Keith Martin

Re: Ed Palm’s commentary, “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition,” published on May 8:

First, I would like to thank Palm for his service to our country, and congratulate him on his first grandchild.

Although I am not quite sure what motivated Palm to pen this article, I know what has caused me to respond. My oldest daughter is graduating high school in a couple of weeks and will be attending Liberty University in the fall. She is more precious to me than oxygen, and I would never want to put her in a place that is unsafe.

That is one of the reasons that I approve of her decision to attend Liberty this fall. I firmly believe that Liberty is a safer environment because of concealed carry.

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Martin lives in Roanoke.

By Wade Gilley

Dark clouds are forming over America’s public universities as the Wall Street mind-set spreads across more of our institutions. A decade of excessive spending based largely on unlimited student loans is looming dangerously over a major national asset.

In January, Moody’s, the nation’s premier credit rating organization, issued a report titled “U.S. Higher Education Outlook Negative in 2013.” Moody’s evaluation was based on the hundreds of billions of dollars in institutional debt incurred by America’s public universities, including exotic non-traditional financial schemes.

Moody’s evaluation did not include the trillion dollars of debt currently owed by college and university students and former students. Today, more than 35 million Americans owe an average of $24,000 in college loans and half have not earned and are not likely to earn a four-year degree.

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Gilley, a retired university president and former Virginia secretary of education, lives in Reston, Virginia. He is the author of more than a dozen books on higher education administration, including one translated into Japanese and one into Chinese.

Charles Steger

Through triumph and tragedy, Charles Steger kept Tech pointed toward excellence.

Charles Steger earned three degrees from Virginia Tech and devoted most of his professional life to his alma mater, working tirelessly to push it into the top tier of the nation’s elite universities. When he steps down in the next year as Tech’s 15th president, he will leave a voluminous legacy that includes major academic and research advances, a significant expansion of the university’s footprint, and the darkest days in the history of the Blacksburg campus.

Steger moved into the president’s office at the dawn of a new millennium and moved Tech on a path toward elevating its research enterprise and redefining its land-grant mission for a rapidly changing economy. Since 2000, the university has increased its research portfolio by more than 300 percent. It has established seven centralized research institutes, positioning the school to win large-scale research grants.

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by Elizabeth W. Payne

Re: “Va. Tech adopts fees for 2013-14” (April 29 news story):

The Virginia Tech Board of Visitors faced some hard decisions in dealing with the increasing cost of an education at Tech. I am not debating any of the issues, but do wish to express an opinion on differential pricing for high-demand degrees.

Considering the outcry from many sources of the need to educate more students in math, science, engineering and high-technology fields, I question the prudence of Rector George Noland’s suggestion to increase the costs of that type of degree in coming years.

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Payne, a professor emerita from Virginia Western Community College, lives in Roanoke.

By Christina Nuckols

Natasha Lee will go to great lengths to conjure up a little democracy at Virginia Western Community College. The student activities coordinator even dressed as a witch one Halloween and set up a table in a high-traffic spot on campus with a sign reading “Don’t be scared to vote.”

From that experience she learned that students want to vote, but they’re often confused about whether they are registered; if so, where and if not, how to do it. She also realized she needed a better way to connect with students than a big pointy hat.

“We could only reach students who were walking by and stopped to talk to us,” she said.

Enter Sam Novey, director of partnerships at TurboVote, a nonprofit group based in Brooklyn, N.Y.

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Nuckols is the editorial page editor of The Roanoke Times.

By Eddie Amos

Having worked in the high-tech industry for the past 30 years, I have witnessed the importance of a sound education based on science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Collectively, these disciplines are known as STEM and the acronym has become the rallying point to drive awareness around the projected shortage of workers that we are starting to see in this country. In some circles, the letters D or H (STEM-D or STEM-H) are added to the mix to single out the need for more design and health care professionals.

According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, STEM-related jobs have grown three times faster than jobs outside of this grouping.

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Amos is chief technology officer at Meridium Inc. He is a champion of promoting technology in the Roanoke and Blacksburg area and the importance of STEM education.

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by John Long

Campus was a buzz of activity Saturday as I crossed over to the chapel. Commencement was in a few hours; good seats were already being claimed; boxes of programs were stacked; the band was warming up. But I was there for another reason at that early hour: the commissioning of an officer into the United States Marine Corps.

Tim Wolfe was one of my students this past semester; he was enrolled in my class on the history of World War II and seemed to enjoy it. He especially enjoyed the required reading of “Flags of our Fathers,” the stirring tale of the five Marines and one Navy corpsman who raised the flag on Iwo Jima, as immortalized in the famous photograph. I was flattered to receive an invitation to his ceremony, given we’d only met in January.

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Long, a Roanoke Times columnist, is director of the Salem Museum.

By Ed Palm

One of the most maudlin themes of the Western melodrama is that of the callow young man who, intent on commanding respect, insists on wearing a gun. Johnny Cash’s 1958 hit “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town,” for instance, relates how one such would-be gunslinger comes to a bad end. I thought of Cash’s ballad recently when I learned that Liberty University — the Christian university founded in 1971 by Jerry Falwell in Lynchburg — now allows faculty, staff, students and visitors to carry concealed weapons on campus and in campus buildings.

In all fairness, Liberty claims to be requiring anyone who would bring a gun on campus to have a concealed-weapon permit and to register with the campus police. People who carry concealed weapons, however, generally keep them concealed. And, as with most universities, anyone can walk on to Liberty’s campus and into its buildings without security screening. The requirements to have a permit and to register with the campus police, therefore, are unenforceable.

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Palm is a Vietnam veteran and retired Marine officer who went on to a second career in university teaching and administration. He is temporarily residing in Lynchburg, getting acquainted with his first grandchild.