I think I've hit my breaking point...

[BlueDogs]

These are the consequences of decades of overspending by government for entrenched political interests starting with outrageous salaries and benefits for the educational monopoly. The reason tuition has vastly outpaced inflation is sitting right in front of the classrooms and administrative offices. The taxpayer has been plundered by thieves masquerading as civil and educational servants while the rest of us work harder for less. If you want change get rid of the Edith Pragues and other idiots that have systematically run this state into the ground over the past 20 years.

 

[FfldCntyFan]

What exactly do you want them to do? Tax the athletic programs?

I believe the best method (although aas an accountant the last thing I want to see is more additions to the Internal Revenue Code) would be to put some form of excise tax on exhorbutant coaches salaries.

The arms race is not to get more revenue for student athletes or to improve academics. It is to give Mack Brown the ridiculous bonus he received a couple of years back and for the SEC to price most other conferences out of being able to hire/retain quality coaching staffs. If a school had to pay something significant off the top if their coaching salaries were an excessive amount above the industry average, this would put the bulk of that money where these schools claim it is going.

 

[upstater]

I believe the best method (although aas an accountant the last thing I want to see is more additions to the Internal Revenue Code) would be to put some form of excise tax on exhorbutant coaches salaries.

The arms race is not to get more revenue for student athletes or to improve academics. It is to give Mack Brown the ridiculous bonus he received a couple of years back and for the SEC to price most other conferences out of being able to hire/retain quality coaching staffs. If a school had to pay something significant off the top if their coaching salaries were an excessive amount above the industry average, this would put the bulk of that money where these schools claim it is going.

I've obviously been hammering on Mack Brown's raise for awhile now. It's not as if hiring say NW's Pat Fitzgerald at 1/2 Brown's salary wouldn't yield the same results for Texas. It would. I just wonder what actual mechanisms you can use to enforce such an outcome (I take it you were being facetious about taxing one profession differently than all others?)

 

[upstater]

These are the consequences of decades of overspending by government for entrenched political interests starting with outrageous salaries and benefits for the educational monopoly. The reason tuition has vastly outpaced inflation is sitting right in front of the classrooms and administrative offices. The taxpayer has been plundered by thieves masquerading as civil and educational servants while the rest of us work harder for less. If you want change get rid of the Edith Pragues and other idiots that have systematically run this state into the ground over the past 20 years.

You don't know what you are talking about. There has been a drop in full-time faculty from over 75% to 32% in the last couple of decades. That's not the reason for the rise in tuitions. If you want to know the reason, backchannel me for studies on the issue.

 

[FfldCntyFan]

This would really need to be a penalty, not a tax (similar to an early withdrawal penalty from a deferred account). The IRS cannot put a cap on what an entity (in this case a 501(c)) could pay an employee and they cannot tax the individual at an excessive level. They could however (if the methodology were a limit something that could be reasonably calculated) determine certain levels of compensation (such as more than a certain percentage above the mean or median for the industry) as excessive and penalize the entity for distributing excess compensation.

I am a bit unique in that I am basically a conservative who believes that the government should be able to (to some extent) regulate certain industries and detrimental business practices. The tax code is the best means to accomplish this (although its current state is horrendous).

 

[BlueDogs]

You don't know what you are talking about. There has been a drop in full-time faculty from over 75% to 32% in the last couple of decades. That's not the reason for the rise in tuitions. If you want to know the reason, backchannel me for studies on the issue.

I beg to differ. You dont know what you're talking about professor. Just open the UConn budgets and you will see the following 5-9% year over year increases in the personnel and fringe benefits lines of the operating budget. These compounding increases over a reltively short periods of time result in massive spending increases. This coupled with similar behaviors at the local and state budget levels have resulted in an all out assault on taxpayers. Im not interested in nonsense studies that try to explain away what is plainly obvious to those who care to look, but thanks anyway.

 

[upstater]

There have been studies on this issue heavy with empirical analysis. PM me and I'll send you the link to the studies. You are wrong on this. The non-fixed budget doesn't go up that fast. The increase in research spending however is fixed and contractual. You MUST increase spending there, it's part of the contract. But most colleges are not growing research like UConn is.

I beg to differ. You dont know what you're talking about professor. Just open the UConn budgets and you will see the following 5-9% year over year increases in the personnel and fringe benefits lines of the operating budget. These compounding increases over a reltively short periods of time result in massive spending increases. This coupled with similar behaviors at the local and state budget levels have resulted in an all out assault on taxpayers. Im not interested in nonsense studies that try to explain away what is plainly obvious to those who care to look, but thanks anyway.