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Every state has colleges that take tuition money to spend on college sports. The vast majority of college varsity teams run a deficit every year and the tuition of regular students pick up the tab.
Here is the amount of tuition per student per year that is used to fund college sports in the state of Michigan:
For example, if you went to Eastern Michigan University for 4 years and put it all on student loans, you would have about $5,000 in student loan debt (plus interest) strictly from your tuition money being used to fund their largely abysmal sports programs. With typical interest rates and making minimum payments on a student loan - with 4 years at Eastern Michigan University you will pay about $7,000 to fund their sports program.
Is this a justifiable use of "tuition money" as tuition rises nationally? Or do sports help market the school, raise donations, etc?
At the University of Michigan there are 27 varsity sports teams, typically only 3 or less teams pay for themselves...Football, men's basketball, and usually men's ice hockey. The football team had a revenue of over $100,000,000.00 last year and most of that was profit. That means that 24 teams are constantly a drain and require the football team to survive so that student tuition is not damaged as seen in the chart above.
While at the University of Michigan as a student, several professors noted that donations to the school went up when the football teams did better - as did applicants for incoming freshman. However, Michigan isn't one of the bigger offenders on the list above.
Should schools drop teams down to more affordable lower athletic divisions (with less scholarships) so that they can spend less "tuition" money on sports?
So, if you have a football program bringing money, the school shouldn't be forced to use any of it to pay for a women's softball program.
I believe that by law you have to have an amount of scholarship athletes by gender similar to the ratio of gender on campus.
The University of Michigan has all of their female teams lose money and most of their male teams lose money as well. However, you need the female teams to comply with the law and with 85 scholarships on an FBS football team - and more women on campus than men, that means you need a lot of girls teams to comply with the law.
It starts in public high school. In many states and schools the highest paid employees are football coaches - often over $100,00 while teachers get $50,000. Reduce sports and either cut property taxes or transfer them to STEM programs.
Every state has colleges that take tuition money to spend on college sports. The vast majority of college varsity teams run a deficit every year and the tuition of regular students pick up the tab.
Here is the amount of tuition per student per year that is used to fund college sports in the state of Michigan:
For example, if you went to Eastern Michigan University for 4 years and put it all on student loans, you would have about $5,000 in student loan debt (plus interest) strictly from your tuition money being used to fund their largely abysmal sports programs. With typical interest rates and making minimum payments on a student loan - with 4 years at Eastern Michigan University you will pay about $7,000 to fund their sports program.
Is this a justifiable use of "tuition money" as tuition rises nationally? Or do sports help market the school, raise donations, etc?
At the University of Michigan there are 27 varsity sports teams, typically only 3 or less teams pay for themselves...Football, men's basketball, and usually men's ice hockey. The football team had a revenue of over $100,000,000.00 last year and most of that was profit. That means that 24 teams are constantly a drain and require the football team to survive so that student tuition is not damaged as seen in the chart above.
While at the University of Michigan as a student, several professors noted that donations to the school went up when the football teams did better - as did applicants for incoming freshman. However, Michigan isn't one of the bigger offenders on the list above.
Should schools drop teams down to more affordable lower athletic divisions (with less scholarships) so that they can spend less "tuition" money on sports?
Could be worse!
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The faculty council is set to vote on a motion deploring this state of affairs. The athletic department has run an annual deficit of at least $20 million since 2006; its current deficit is slightly larger than the sum of all the deficits in every other Big Ten athletic department.
All of which brings us to the athletic department’s 2016 financial report to the N.C.A.A. The Star-Ledger obtained this document recently; it showed a blood-red deficit of $28.6 million. The 64-page report had a one-line notation: “Other Operating Revenue: $10,495,912.”
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Rutgers also diverted $11 million in student fees and $17.1 million from its general fund to cover the athletic shortfall. The average undergraduate now pays more than $300 in activities fees exclusively for the university’s N.C.A.A. teams.
Quote:
Rutgers’s fired athletic officials will draw severance payments for years to come. Hermann is owed about $1.2 million over the next two years. Flood will pull down $2.1 million. Eddie Jordan, the basketball coach who, refreshingly, was fired for losing rather than for abusing his players, will receive almost $1.9 million......
An intriguing aspect of Rutgers’s dive into big-time sports is that each time a coach or an athletic director left soaked in scandal, the successor received more money. The departed football coach made $1.25 million; the new coach makes $2 million. The departed basketball coach made about $1.1 million; the new coach makes $1.6 million.
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“The athletic department has already budgeted for a 2 percent increase in student fees,” Killingsworth said. “I have a novel idea: Why don’t they learn to live within their means?”
That’s a small-time question for a big-time athletic program.
I'm fine with collegiate sports being limited to those that support themselves; as a matter of fact, that is how it should be.
But on the same subject, you shouldn't force a school to use money from one sport to pay for another.
So, if you have a football program bringing money, the school shouldn't be forced to use any of it to pay for a women's softball program.
The Title 9 law from the 1970s, says that should be done. There are also many men's sports that don't generate revenue, that get funding from income that the major sports collect. But I'm very much opposed to using tuition money to fund college sports, which have grown so large, they've essentially become major, self-directing enterprises. I was pleased when the Presidents of our local University made big decisions in recent years, that took back some of the control from the Athletic Dept.
There's many important sports at colleges for both men and women, that couldn't exist without some funding from outside their own revenues. If you like those sports and see a value in them, you'd probably support shared funding from football and basketball income. If you don't appreciate them, then you'd likely oppose that sharing. Currently, those who approve of this system of funding all the sports programs, have the upper hand.
There are a number of very popular "club sports" at most schools, that receive only token money from the schools. They have to provide their own resources, from benefit activities they hold and from donations. This is the way that all college sports used to be. I'd like to see a return to something that was about halfway between the two extremes of being either "big business" or "near poverty".
Does this take into consideration the alumni support --- donations to the school? Alumni who are really devoted to their teams?
Age old discussion
Alumni tend to be highly devoted to the football team and men's basketball team...and as whole nothing really else.
When was the last time that you heard of a major alumni association gathering for the wrestling team, the women's crew team, or the water polo team? Yet at every school where these are varsity sports the programs as individuals run 7 figure deficits.
If public schools are worried about alumni support - why not just fund the ones that run a profit (football and men's basketball) and then just enough programs to comply gender laws while breaking even. The other sports can be bumped down a division where less scholarships are given out or could become club sports that still play other schools.
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