I have no particular knowledge of the financial figures involved, but it would not at all surprise me to learn that our athletic programs have been generously subsidized... ironically so, at a time when many core academic disciplines have been challenged to justify their very existence. My general comment is simply that our priorities (as a university, as a nation) in this regard are badly twisted. Collegiate athletics have been "amateur" in name only for a very long time, and those of us who have objected have been told, impatiently, that the athletic departments are lucrative and subsidize US. So, I look forward to reading your story; but I don't guess I can really contribute to it in a substantive way.
(Another course begging to be offered here: The Ethics of Sport.)
College sports feast on $800M in student fees, subsidies
By Jack Gillum, Jodi Upton and Steve Berkowitz
USA TODAY
More than $800 million in student fees and university subsidies are propping up athletic programs at the nation's top sports colleges, including hundreds of millions in the richest conferences, a USA TODAYanalysis found.
The subsidies have reached that level amid a continuing crisis in higher education funding.
At some of the schools where athletics is most heavily subsidized, faculty salaries have dipped, state-funded financial aid is drying up and students are bracing for tuition and fee hikes.
At Middle Tennessee State University, student fees contributed $5.3 million of the athletics department's revenues in 2008. Total spending on sports was listed at $19.6 million.
The Murfreesboro university — which has the largest number of students in the state — moved to the NCAA's highest level, Division I, in 1999.
According to the USA TODAY reports, MTSU allocated $3.4 million in student fees to athletics in 2005. Direct state and other government support of athletics at MTSU jumped from $5.9 million in 2005 to $6.7 million in 2008.
In March, as news of an estimated $181 million cut in Tennessee's higher education budget broke, MTSU was the first school to submit a detailed list of budget cuts ordered by the Tennessee Board of Regents.
* In its report, MTSU listed four departments — geosciences, philosophy, physics and criminal justice administration — that could be eliminated as a cost-saving measure.
The worst-case scenario budget was put off using federal stimulus money, said Steven Chappell, director of student publications at MTSU.
If that budget had been adopted, Chappell said more than half his
spending was on the chopping block.
"Every department was taking cuts," he said. "Nobody was exempt."
Athletics was targeted as well, Chappell said.
"I'm sure MTSU supports the athletic department with money not earned by athletics, but that happens at every university," he said. "That's common knowledge.
"Athletics are a big deal here in the South."
Subsidies grew 20 percent
Taken together, the subsidies for athletics at 99 public schools in the NCAA's 120-member Football Bowl Subdivision grew about 20% in four years, from $685 million in 2005 to $826 million in 2008, after adjusting for inflation.
"The word I would use is 'appalling,' " said Carole Browne, a biology professor at Wake Forest who co-chairs the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics, a national faculty group that advocates for college athletics reform.
"It's appalling in the big picture and representative of what is going on in athletics with coaches' salaries and facilities. It's part of a bigger problem."
USA TODAY, through open-records requests, obtained four years of revenue and expense reports schools must send annually to the NCAA. The newspaper examined allocated revenues from student fees, university and state sources.
Of the 30 schools where the percentage of athletics revenue coming from allocated sources rose the most from 2005 to 2008, about half are from power conferences, often assumed to be self-supporting.
The 2009 reports, which may show even bigger gaps in some cases because of the recent recession, are due to the NCAA on Friday.
Nebraska and Louisiana State were the only schools whose athletics programs reported receiving no subsidies in each of the four years studied.
Students disagree
Dustin Evans, a senior organizational communications major at MTSU, said he wished the school would put more emphasis on academics, but he doesn't think there's a conflict between athletics spending and academic spending.
"I'm not an athlete, but our athletics program is definitely building right now. We just won a bowl game and it was really amazing," Evans said. "Sports is a part of the college experience."
Emma Egli, a junior journalism major, doesn't like using student fees to support athletics. "I think the money is better spent on academics," she said.
Egli said her department hasn't cut classes yet, but a lot of concentration areas, such as journalism and publicity, are merging."It's really not fair," she said. "I shouldn't have to pay to fund the sports teams. I'm coming here to get my education, not to play sports."
By Jack Gillum, Jodi Upton and Steve Berkowitz
USA TODAY
More than $800 million in student fees and university subsidies are propping up athletic programs at the nation's top sports colleges, including hundreds of millions in the richest conferences, a USA TODAYanalysis found.
The subsidies have reached that level amid a continuing crisis in higher education funding.
At some of the schools where athletics is most heavily subsidized, faculty salaries have dipped, state-funded financial aid is drying up and students are bracing for tuition and fee hikes.
At Middle Tennessee State University, student fees contributed $5.3 million of the athletics department's revenues in 2008. Total spending on sports was listed at $19.6 million.
The Murfreesboro university — which has the largest number of students in the state — moved to the NCAA's highest level, Division I, in 1999.
According to the USA TODAY reports, MTSU allocated $3.4 million in student fees to athletics in 2005. Direct state and other government support of athletics at MTSU jumped from $5.9 million in 2005 to $6.7 million in 2008.
In March, as news of an estimated $181 million cut in Tennessee's higher education budget broke, MTSU was the first school to submit a detailed list of budget cuts ordered by the Tennessee Board of Regents.
* In its report, MTSU listed four departments — geosciences, philosophy, physics and criminal justice administration — that could be eliminated as a cost-saving measure.
The worst-case scenario budget was put off using federal stimulus money, said Steven Chappell, director of student publications at MTSU.
If that budget had been adopted, Chappell said more than half his
spending was on the chopping block.
"Every department was taking cuts," he said. "Nobody was exempt."
Athletics was targeted as well, Chappell said.
"I'm sure MTSU supports the athletic department with money not earned by athletics, but that happens at every university," he said. "That's common knowledge.
"Athletics are a big deal here in the South."
Subsidies grew 20 percent
Taken together, the subsidies for athletics at 99 public schools in the NCAA's 120-member Football Bowl Subdivision grew about 20% in four years, from $685 million in 2005 to $826 million in 2008, after adjusting for inflation.
"The word I would use is 'appalling,' " said Carole Browne, a biology professor at Wake Forest who co-chairs the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics, a national faculty group that advocates for college athletics reform.
"It's appalling in the big picture and representative of what is going on in athletics with coaches' salaries and facilities. It's part of a bigger problem."
USA TODAY, through open-records requests, obtained four years of revenue and expense reports schools must send annually to the NCAA. The newspaper examined allocated revenues from student fees, university and state sources.
Of the 30 schools where the percentage of athletics revenue coming from allocated sources rose the most from 2005 to 2008, about half are from power conferences, often assumed to be self-supporting.
The 2009 reports, which may show even bigger gaps in some cases because of the recent recession, are due to the NCAA on Friday.
Nebraska and Louisiana State were the only schools whose athletics programs reported receiving no subsidies in each of the four years studied.
Students disagree
Dustin Evans, a senior organizational communications major at MTSU, said he wished the school would put more emphasis on academics, but he doesn't think there's a conflict between athletics spending and academic spending.
"I'm not an athlete, but our athletics program is definitely building right now. We just won a bowl game and it was really amazing," Evans said. "Sports is a part of the college experience."
Emma Egli, a junior journalism major, doesn't like using student fees to support athletics. "I think the money is better spent on academics," she said.
Egli said her department hasn't cut classes yet, but a lot of concentration areas, such as journalism and publicity, are merging."It's really not fair," she said. "I shouldn't have to pay to fund the sports teams. I'm coming here to get my education, not to play sports."
Charles Darwin (
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2 comments:
Phil,
The deprioritization of certain areas of the campus community by the amount of publicity allowed them (I mentioned this to you earlier.) has begun. We received our new beat assignments in this office today. Among the areas now designated as "ancillary" by our supervisor are the President's Commission on the Status of Women, the Middle East Center, the McNair Scholars Program, Governor's School for the Arts, and Intercultural and Diversity Affairs. This is in writing and a column will appear eventually in The Record revealing which individuals now have which areas of promotion. However, I don't know if there will be any official explanation of why some interests on campus were designated "ancillary" for publicity purposes and others were given priority.
Gina
Gina,
"Official explanations" often explain little, but the pattern you describe is not hard to spot. How naive we all were, to imagine that such chauvinism was itself becoming "ancillary" in our national and collegiate cultures. I say we should demand explanations anyway. "No publicity" can backfire as bad publicity for the promulgators of such policies, and then they'll wonder who's ancillary now!
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