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In response to my queries over the last month, a few universities claimed that their athletic gains were dispersed throughout the school’s programs. When pressed, however, university chancellors and spokespeople could not vouch for how the athletic funds contributed to academic innovation across departmental lines. The athletic revenue had merely funded scholarships for student athletes (not the rest of the students).
Even if sports bring fans incomparable joy, is it worth the ever widening financial inequality between varsity head coaches and their academic counterparts? In this dire economic climate, there is little justification for varsity coaches’ salaries rivaling those of university presidents. Averaging roughly twenty big state schools, the ratio of salaries (university football head coach to president to tenured professor) is $2.5 million to $450,000 to $90,000. The mean state budget shortfall in these states in the most fiscal year is $4.5 billion.
The dominance of sports is particularly intense in Texas, which brought America Buzz Bissinger’s Friday Night Lights and its portrayal of athletic madness starting at the high school level. One Texas reporter covering the Super Bowl beat this year told me that public universities have to invest in football above all else because it is the only way to bring home the bacon in the classroom.
“You can’t compare what Nick Saban makes coaching the University of Alabama football team to what a published economist makes at the school. Saban generates revenue; the economist doesn’t.” The reporter argued we need a “new spin on this age-old issue.” Perhaps that novel angle is a willingness to believe that university mathematicians can generate revenue and fuel economic advances for the school if they are funded adequately.
When I asked why coaches are paid infinitely more than professors to Kristine Calogne, a vice chancellor for communications at LSU, she replied, “Salaries are driven by the market.” But ideas should drive what the market and salaries mean to an institution of higher education.
“It costs a certain amount to secure a great professor or chancellor or president, and it costs a certain amount to obtain a great coach. Those amounts are driven by what other universities and even professional teams across the nation are paying.” She implied that LSU athletics’ appearances prime-time television is the “best possible exposure” for the university to a national and international audience of prospective students.
Among schools whose athletic programs garner no government subsidy, many college officials claim questions of priority don’t apply to them. “The university may not fit into the premise suggested by the questions you have submitted. Athletics is a fully self-supporting enterprise and covers all of its costs. It gets no subsidy from the university,” said Don Hale, vice president of public affairs at the University of Texas.
But these universities seem unable to market schools around academic accomplishments that can strengthen their hometown communities and the nation’s livelihood. For public universities, ESPN is more profitable exposure than the New York Times.
FSU’s Gibbons argues that the media climate is responsible in which the public is sending the wrong “signals about priorities.” In possible the gutsiest moment of candor among my exchanges with any presidents, Gibbons continued:
“Despite many interesting stories, stories on athletics in the media overwhelmingly get more attention than stories about academics. I believe that on-line media, for which hit rates can be recorded, has made this even more evident to the media and advertisers. So, the media respond by focusing on athletic events because they want advertising dollars. The TV contracts for the major conferences also demonstrate a very high level of competitiveness to pay for athletics.”
Yet many schools in cut-wounded country, like the University of Arizona, don’t seem uncomfortable with the predominance of sports. President Robert Shelton said appropriately prioritized its programs in the wake of significant budget cuts and the continued threat of future ones.
Does the university have too much emphasis on its sports culture? “The emphasis at the UA is on a comprehensive educational experience for our students,” Shelton answered.
Public universities could take a cue from President Barack Obama’s recent State of the Union in which the president insisted that America must invest in “big ideas” in order to compete with China and a host of other budding super-powers. Embracing the path to innovation, public universities must evaluate where financial need is most pressing.
It’s time for us to look in the mirror, and for us to no longer confuse a national pastime with securing a national livelihood. As university presidents said in a myriad of interviews, sports are part of the college experience. But they don’t justify many times the financial resources and attention of academic departments, especially when so many public universities, in every tier, are struggling to provide first-rate educations.
The recently published book, Academically Adrift, revealed that 45 percent of the nation’s undergraduates “learn very little in their first two years of college.” Moreover, according to the study, college does not improve students’ critical thinking or writing. We just might be drifting into oblivion because cable’s athletes of the week have taken precedence over colleges’ duty to raise lifelong intellectuals. [Image via]
Heffner is a junior at Harvard College.
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Daniel Freysinger on June 05, 2012 5:47 AM:
So many universities claim that sports are either revenue neutral or positive for their schools. There is a simple solution. Firewall the atheletic funding. Make them prove that athletics doesn't cost tuition dollars. There are far more colleges that lose money from athletics than there are that gain from it.
The real value is in marketing. Marketing seems to be the only thing administrators consider. They are interested in international and out-of-state students who bring the big tuition dollars.
This keeping up with the Jones' is breaking the bank for students who pay sticker price for education.