At universities and colleges, sports and social activities are just as important as classes and libraries and should receive equal financial support.

In these days of automation, when people are inactive and isolated, no one can deny the value of socializing and participating in sports. There has been no shortage of debates among the scholars whether the universities should provide matching funding for extracurricular activities like sports and social events as opposed to academic ones. As for this writer's opinion, I subscribe to this idea. I feel this for two reasons, which I will explore in the following essay. To begin with, one main objective of universities is training the students in the necessary features they need in life, including social skills and how to have a healthy body. Institutes cannot accomplish this goal unless they invest in social and sports events equally compared to scientific ones. My personal experience is compelling evidence of this notion. When I was a bachelor's student, my university invested a significant amount of its budget in academic courses like mathematics and physics. Hence, throughout those years, all of my friends' free time was devoted to learning these lessons. Despite the fact that they are clearly knowledgeable in their fields, many of them are currently unable to obtain employment that matches their credentials due to poor communication skills. Furthermore, participating in sports and social events has been proven to correlate with academic success. There is a Persian adage that states “a healthy mind is in a healthy body”. In other words, if colleges do no allocate the same financial resource for extracurricular activities as academic ones, the importance of this activity faded into oblivion among the students. As a result, in the long run, the students will contract many physical and mental ailments due to inactivity and isolation. These kinds of illnesses have a direct influence on academic prosperity of the children. In sum, with all this taken into account, I firmly believe that academic institutions should consider the same financial support for both classes and extracurricular activities. It is because the mentioned skills influence the prosperity of individuals in the future, and the student's academic achievements depend on their mental and physical well-being as well.