Budgets aren't isolated islands though. Various sources of funding and monies come in and are pooled for various projects and courses. Then that pool divvied up amongst courses. Not sure how decisions are made, but when total pool amount decreases, some courses are axed from list. It may be too labour-intensive to analyse each and every course to determine whether it's fully self-supported.
At UCSB, I recall club-sports and NCAA sports had different budgets. Due to cut-backs, they looked at easiest to drop item that had largest costs. That way, only single sport was cut. Turned out to be football team!!!
