University provides certain services to the department that the department doesn't pay for. Of course, the university does this for all of its departments to varying extents; that's what a university does. It also provides student fees that are earmarked for athletics as well as other student services designed to enhance the student experience (arts, museums, activities, campus transportation, etc.). Th eissue is that when people see the $10M subsidy they think that the university is taking money from tuition or the taxpayers and giving that money directly to the department to fund the department's largess. This is not what's happening, it's much more of just the university as the overarching entity providing the types of benefits that most people expect a university to provide. With any entity this size it's always possible to try to link up the various buckets and characterize "funding" in countless different ways. I'm just explaining what is really happening when it is mischaracterized. It's also an explanation of why the "subsidization" is unlikely to ever go away; what is called subsidization is just the natural result of being a department in a huge university.