Colleges using student fees to pay for athletics

[Michchamp]

This is not surprising, and I've felt like that "sports pay for themselves" line has always been bullshit:

Katelyn Waltemyer, a junior at James Madison University in Virginia, was stunned by what she learned during a seemingly simple assignment for the campus newspaper: dissecting the school's tuition bill.

Buried in each student's yearly cost of almost $23,000 was a required fee of $2,340 solely to finance the school's sports teams. The money was not for using the gym, or for funding student clubs and activities. It was only for underwriting the costs of athletic teams ? and a student could only find out about it by visiting and searching the school's website.
​

JMU isn't even a big football or basketball mill...

...actually, maybe it is a football mill:

At James Madison, the money financed success on the football field. The school's football team has appeared in the championship game of the second tier of Division 1 football three times in the past four years, winning once.

...

as costs climb, universities are not required to disclose how much they charge students for sports teams.

"It's by design that they're not being transparent because they know that it's not right," said Natalia Abrams, executive director of the Student Debt Crisis, an advocacy group that works to reduce student debt. "It's incredibly deceptive to bundle it that way."

Abrams noted that when students pay for these fees with student loans, they end up paying even more as those debts accrue interest.
​

spending cash to win FCS championships. what a dumb waste of money. all ending up in inflated coaches' salaries, real estate developers that get huge shitpiles of cash to build facilities, and AD salaries. Meanwhile, student loan indebtedness skyrockets...

The article has a section at the bottom where you can see how much the fees to maintain athletics are at various schools. FWIW, none of the Michigan publics, nor OSU charge a fee for this. Or so they claim, at least.

Private universities are not included in this list, since they're not subject to public records laws.

 

[Michchamp]

poking around, it looks like some of the SEC programs charge student fees to support athletics, but not in the thousands of dollars.



Among the Big Ten, Maryland, Rutgers, Iowa and Illinois do. Rutgers & Maryland are the highest at $376/year & $406/year respectively.



I guess the cost to support athletic teams is to some extent standard, but with more students, bigger publics can spread the cost around more. Or if they have profitable programs, their ADs can self fund the enterprise.

 

[Spartanmack]

Curt Cignetti makes $462k/yr and his 10 on field assistants average ~$107k/yr so total staff comp is about $1.5mm (a little less than 2 months of Jim Harbaugh's salary) and their stadium was built in 1973.


If every student pays those fees and it looks like they do, JMU collects about $51mm a year and according to this recent report football eats up about 81% of that. That puts the HC and his staff at 1.1 and 2.5% of the football budget, respectively. So the reality appears to be that football is just a really expensive sport and while the people of Virginia should decide whether or not it makes sense to have a program and make students pay for it, it doesn't appear to be going to overpaying coaches and giving "shitpiles" of cash to real estate developers.

 

[Michchamp]

...

If every student pays those fees and it looks like they do, JMU collects about $51mm a year and according to this recent report football eats up about 81% of that. ...

Your "recent report" is dated October 5, 2013.

 

[Spartanmack]

Your "recent report" is dated October 5, 2013.

and? it's the most recent report that breaks down the football program as a percent of the athletic budget. do you think that ratio has changed much since then or are you trying to make it look like all the data including coaches salaries are from 2013 even though the Curt Cignetti was hired last year?