Key tweets, and it's all gone to Hell.

[Eavesdrop]

Here are the 2023 numbers. 50 Most Applied to Colleges in 2023 I did say the UC system dominated.

I don't doubt that @bendm is right about the common app. Also, the Covid era changed the whole application process, from 5-6 schools to 12-15 schools. NEU is getting a boost from Co-op and perception that college needs to lead to employment.

The point is about sports. Do schools need sports to drive applications? In the absence of something else, maybe. But if you have that something else, whether great academics, a great campus, location like Boston, affordability, a fun granola vibe in a cool small city (UVM), you don't need football.

Penn State University Park, Texas, aTm and Ohio State not ranking in the top 50 makes me wonder about that list.

And only Florida State made the list from sunshine state? That also seems unlikely. (I believe little FAU had 37000 first year applicants in 2023, which should be put it at 30th.)

 

[upstater]

A mean average for tuition seems fairly simple. Take total tuition and divide by total students.
Apply that value to the scholarship players.

But this doesn't take costs into account, while the bean counters DO take costs into account. If the average is well below expenses, you've effectively de-incentivized departments to take athletes as students. Because the bosses will surely hold that against departments when it comes to the metrics.

 

[upstater]

Again, the argument that athletics somehow victimizes academia as a whole isn't reality based. The athletic Director isn't superior to the president. You seem to believe that the president is held hostage by other interested parties, I would suggest a far more reasonable interpretation is merely that there is economic value in athletics. Certainly, some of that value is that it is a bad idea not to listen to your customers and your stakeholders. That's not just true in academia that's true everywhere.

The Athletic Director at Texas A&M went to the board and got the President fired a few years ago for telling him he could not have another $30m budget mistake.

The stakeholders in West Virginia and many other places have already shown they don't much care for the health of the university. I'm not sure how many examples you need before you realize that boosters are nuts.

 

[upstater]

I would say no, when you argue that all revenue is fungible, except for the revenue that appears in the athletic side because that's only the athletic side, even though that revenue is being used to pay tuition money.

Again, you need to be consistent in your arguments.

Spell out what you're trying to say here.

People have argued that the merchandise sales, as meager as they are, benefit academic departments. I said those are counted as athletic revenue, not academic departments.

Let me give you an example of the kind of thinking that goes on inside universities now: it used to be the energies were put into attracting as many majors as possible to signal the health of the department. But just like private universities who measure health by how many full payers there are, public university departments are now also looking at the demographics. Because the administration has stated flat out that it loses money on every student who isn't a full payer. And they show this in the metrics. If some of these universities could, they would bar any kid whose state tuition is defrayed by a state program.

I'm not sure what they are doing in admissions but I suspect they are making things harder on such students. This is the only way they can justify letting in all the out of staters and internationals.

So, the point is, if you're dropping the tuition reimbursment to in-state, the bean counters are simply going to point out that the rest of the cost, which is subsidized by the university, will be billed to the departments. They are de-incentivizing departments who may want to attract athletes, kids on Pell Grants, etc.

 

[CL82]

The Athletic Director at Texas A&M went to the board and got the President fired a few years ago for telling him he could not have another $30m budget mistake.
.

AD didn't fire him right? He made his case to the board who apparently agreed. Isn't that the way corporate structure works? Or do you think presidents of universities should be answerable to no one?

The stakeholders in West Virginia and many other places have already shown they don't much care for the health of the university. I'm not sure how many examples you need before you realize that boosters are nuts.

Why are they nuts? Because the have a different worldview than you? Apparently, you envision boosters donating to a university without athletics. I think the board may find that having boosters support the university justifies the expensive athletics again, no one's being victimized. It's just people making reasonably intelligent and informed decisions.

 

[UConn Dan]

 

[upstater]

UConn budget is $1.6 billion
UCOnn health, medical and dental school is $1.5 billion.

The president if the school fighting over how we account $30M in a budget shortfall can’t be something she stresses over too much.

This is an athletic department issue.

Most of the budget is spoken for. It's not fungible. It's not like you can turn the heat off in the dorms during the winter to save some money.

At a university with a similar budget to UConn, the entire College of Arts and Sciences operates on $14m a year. This doesn't include salaries and benefits of workers which are contractual. A $2m deficit in a $1.5b university caused wholesale slashing of events, programs, travel, hiring. When the deficit for UConn was $90m, the President of the university said each department would have to cut 15% of its salaried workforce as a retrenchment measure. This is killer. The state gave UConn $60m more, so now it has a $30m deficit. That is not nothings. $100m deficit at West Virginia caused them to shutter 13 departments.

 

[superjohn]

Even if that were true, are you saying that colleges without sports don't sell a lot of these things? Because they do. The brand income (which falls under royalties) is not at all that much different than at comparable sized institutions without big time sports.

Sure. Lolz

 

[superjohn]

Gonna disagree with you here.

As a new Michigan State dad (2 weeks since drop off) of an out of state student, I have never seen so much Green and White of everything on everyone, everywhere. From my short stay, I would rank the merchandising reasons as school pride, regional tradition, and then sports.

Lolz, it's all about sports.

 

[CL82]

Spell out what you're trying to say here.

People have argued that the merchandise sales, as meager as they are, benefit academic departments. I said those are counted as athletic revenue, not academic departments.

Let me give you an example of the kind of thinking that goes on inside universities now: it used to be the energies were put into attracting as many majors as possible to signal the health of the department. But just like private universities who measure health by how many full payers there are, public university departments are now also looking at the demographics. Because the administration has stated flat out that it loses money on every student who isn't a full payer. And they show this in the metrics. If some of these universities could, they would bar any kid whose state tuition is defrayed by a state program.

I'm not sure what they are doing in admissions but I suspect they are making things harder on such students. This is the only way they can justify letting in all the out of staters and internationals.

So, the point is, if you're dropping the tuition reimbursment to in-state, the bean counters are simply going to point out that the rest of the cost, which is subsidized by the university, will be billed to the departments. They are de-incentivizing departments who may want to attract athletes, kids on Pell Grants, etc.

Yeah, this one really meandered. You seem to be reduced to tossing around red herrings.

In summary, I don't find the notion that academics are somehow victimized by athletics, particularly persuasive. Nor do I find it particularly persuasive that every president of any university participating athletics is somehow being extorted into doing it. A far less tortured explanation is that decision-makers at universities realize that athletics bring value to the university in excess of their cost.

As Occam postulated, the simplest answer is the most likely to be the correct one.

 

[JohnFSilver]

Most of the budget is spoken for. It's not fungible. It's not like you can turn the heat off in the dorms during the winter to save some money.

At a university with a similar budget to UConn, the entire College of Arts and Sciences operates on $14m a year. This doesn't include salaries and benefits of workers which are contractual. A $2m deficit in a $1.5b university caused wholesale slashing of events, programs, travel, hiring. When the deficit for UConn was $90m, the President of the university said each department would have to cut 15% of its salaried workforce as a retrenchment measure. This is killer. The state gave UConn $60m more, so now it has a $30m deficit. That is not nothings. $100m deficit at West Virginia caused them to shutter 13 departments.

UConn provides the support. It isn’t like they are expecting the athletics to break even. They know what their numbers are and it is budgeted. It depends if they come under or over that number that matters.

The money UConn gets from the school in institutional support is part of the athletic dept budget. So, in essence, their books are balancerd.

I am sure they knew when they made an $80M budget that revenues would only make up about half. Benedict doesn’t make his budget expecting $80m in revenue to cover expenses. He knows there is gonna be a huge support. His goal is to not have to ask for more support every year, not expect zero support.

If you eliminate football, all the scholarships. It still leaves the school $20-$25m short and absolutely no ability to expand revenue dramatically.

Folks, football revenue is vastly underperforming. Basketball, women’s hoops, it’s about maxed out.

 

[gioff2323]

Can we get a Really,Really Key Tweets thread going - nothing but tweets that are key to our fit in the realignment game

 

[Kolumbo]

A mean average for tuition seems fairly simple. Take total tuition and divide by total students.
Apply that value to the scholarship players.

How do you calculate total tuition. You have: In state students. Out of state students. Academic Scholarships. Athletic Scholarships. Grants. Cash payments. Loan payments. Full time. Part time. Room and board. Work study. Just figuring out the numerator and denominator requires a PhD in mathematics.

 

[upstater]

Yeah, this one really meandered. You seem to be reduced to tossing around red herrings.

In summary, I don't find the notion that academics are somehow victimized by athletics, particularly persuasive. Nor do I find it particularly persuasive that every president of any university participating athletics is somehow being extorted into doing it. A far less tortured explanation is that decision-makers at universities realize that athletics bring value to the university in excess of their cost.

As Occam postulated, the simplest answer is the most likely to be the correct one.

I didn't say they were victimized. I'm showing you why the tuition reimbursement is important because otherwise the departments are on the hook. It's not meandering at all. It is about the central point of the discussion, the one all this started with. Whether the tuition reimbursement is artificially inflated.

Athletics do bring value. They just don't bring anywhere near the many tens of millions of losses that some are paying, especially now when colleges are shutting down core academics.

I'm not sure what you're doing with Occam here, but I can tell you that many of these presidents think the whole college sports craziness is insane and nutty. Many of them aren't even from the USA and they just go with the flow to attend to the other 95% of their job. The AD makes so much money because it's their job to keep the heat off the president.

Frankly it's perplexing that this very common thing in American life (the short-termerism of CEOs and such) is somehow not credible to you. I've even given you examples in which some presidents have indeed done what they felt was right and proper for the future of the school. There are actual cases to look at; we don't even have to speculate here.

 

[upstater]

UConn provides the support. It isn’t like they are expecting the athletics to break even. They know what their numbers are and it is budgeted. It depends if they come under or over that number that matters.

The money UConn gets from the school in institutional support is part of the athletic dept budget. So, in essence, their books are balancerd.

I am sure they knew when they made an $80M budget that revenues would only make up about half. Benedict doesn’t make his budget expecting $80m in revenue to cover expenses. He knows there is gonna be a huge support. His goal is to not have to ask for more support every year, not expect zero support.

If you eliminate football, all the scholarships. It still leaves the school $20-$25m short and absolutely no ability to expand revenue dramatically.

Folks, football revenue is vastly underperforming. Basketball, women’s hoops, it’s about maxed out.

My only point here is that despite the huge billion+ budget, the money that's discussed when they talk about deficits and cutting is always under $100m. That's the fungible part. You can't look at the research budget which is all spoken for, the buildings, debt service on construction, state and federal regulations and administration, food & housing, etc., and compare it to college budgets or athletic budgets.

My main point is that both the AD and the academic side are running a deficit right now, and the two together must mean that something somewhere is being cut.

 

[upstater]

How do you calculate total tuition. You have: In state students. Out of state students. Academic Scholarships. Athletic Scholarships. Grants. Cash payments. Loan payments. Full time. Part time. Room and board. Work study. Just figuring out the numerator and denominator requires a PhD in mathematics.

Total expenditures to educate each student. That's the bottom line. They know that number, whatever it is. Since the tuition is subsidized by 3 things (more than 3, but the main ones are taxpayer subsidy, research grants, & endowment), we know that tuition is below the total expenditures per student.

So indeed, whatever number they choose, it's not the exact expenditure per student, which is always higher. They know the numbers.

 

[Kolumbo]

Total expenditures to educate each student. That's the bottom line. They know that number, whatever it is. Since the tuition is subsidized by 3 things (more than 3, but the main ones are taxpayer subsidy, research grants, & endowment), we know that tuition is below the total expenditures per student.

So indeed, whatever number they choose, it's not the exact expenditure per student, which is always higher. They know the numbers.

Not at all. Expenditures are the expense side, tuition is the revenue side. Completely different. And they don't even know the expenditure side that easily. One professor teaches multiple classes which include all kinds of students, fulltime, parttime, day, evening, on campus, sattelite campus. Grad students are teaching classes. TA's are teaching. It's extremely complicated.

 

[CL82]

I didn't say they were victimized. I'm showing you why the tuition reimbursement is important because otherwise the departments are on the hook. It's not meandering at all. It is about the central point of the discussion, the one all this started with. Whether the tuition reimbursement is artificially inflated.

Athletics do bring value. They just don't bring anywhere near the many tens of millions of losses that some are paying, especially now when colleges are shutting down core academics.

I'm not sure what you're doing with Occam here, but I can tell you that many of these presidents think the whole college sports craziness is insane and nutty. Many of them aren't even from the USA and they just go with the flow to attend to the other 95% of their job. The AD makes so much money because it's their job to keep the heat off the president.

Frankly it's perplexing that this very common thing in American life (the short-termerism of CEOs and such) is somehow not credible to you. I've even given you examples in which some presidents have indeed done what they felt was right and proper for the future of the school. There are actual cases to look at; we don't even have to speculate here.

Lol, you've listed an unsourced instance that you perceive to be undue influence upon a certain university president At best, that's opinion, not fact. Do you understand the difference?

I think you're moving the goalposts a bit. But I'm glad to see that you are willing to acknowledge that athletics bring value to universities. They do, considerable value value. How do we determine value? Well fair market values generally described as the agreed-upon cost by willing buyer and a willing seller, each being reasonably aware of the circumstances. If we apply that to college athletics, then we can accept that the cost of college athletics must be at fair market value. Again, and it's just unclear to me why this point continuously allude you, if there wasn't a perception of value by the administration, they would not do it. Unless you're going to go back to this notion that they are somehow bullied, badgered, or otherwise coerced.

Whether or not the tuition reimbursement is inflated, depends upon what the true cost of tuition would be. Let me go back to the example I've already discussed. If you have a student athlete, who would be eligible for need-based scholarships, is it appropriate to charge a full tuition then? In essence you're charging more because he's an athlete. Does that seem fair?

 

[UConnJim]

I already addressed everything in this discussion except the last part. I addressed them by mentioning all the other schools that are doing just as well as UConn without a sports brand. Heck, Vermont is now at well over 50% out of state and they pay exorbitant sums to go there, and their applications are through the roof. Since I already write that and you apparently don't agree, let's skip to the last part.

I was a Vermont resident at one point and kind of follow UVM. UVM has some issues and it is now 75% out of state students. Why? UVM gets one of the lowest state subsidies of any state university so they are dependent on out of state tuition to fund the school plus Vermont has a declining student population. UVM focuses their marketing efforts on out of state students so think of UVM as almost a private school.

Applications to UVM declined from 2015/2016 to 2020/2021 and had 2 years of application increases but declined by 7% last year, so I wouldn't say UVM's applications are through the roof.

The role of UVM in Vermont is constantly being debated in the state and it's role is not similar to UConn's in Connecticut.

 

[upstater]

I was a Vermont resident at one point and kind of follow UVM. UVM has some issues and it is now 75% out of state students. Why? UVM gets one of the lowest state subsidies of any state university so they are dependent on out of state tuition to fund the school plus Vermont has a declining student population. UVM focuses their marketing efforts on out of state students so think of UVM as almost a private school.

Applications to UVM declined from 2015/2016 to 2020/2021 and had 2 years of application increases but declined by 7% last year, so I wouldn't say UVM's applications are through the roof.

The role of UVM in Vermont is constantly being debated in the state and it's role is not similar to UConn's in Connecticut.

Someone just posted showing UVM is still one of the top application schools in the nation. A lot of applications for it still. I'd call that through the roof. All colleges have huge issues now and most of them are at least 50% out of state

 

[JohnFSilver]

My only point here is that despite the huge billion+ budget, the money that's discussed when they talk about deficits and cutting is always under $100m. That's the fungible part. You can't look at the research budget which is all spoken for, the buildings, debt service on construction, state and federal regulations and administration, food & housing, etc., and compare it to college budgets or athletic budgets.

My main point is that both the AD and the academic side are running a deficit right now, and the two together must mean that something somewhere is being cut.

The money is allocated for athletics.

This isn’t Dave Benedict falling $40m short of his budget. They have committed institutional support at the beginning of the fiscal year. He has to stay within those budget parameters.

 

[Forte]

Former Fox Sports Networks President Bob Thompson

 

[upstater]

Not at all. Expenditures are the expense side, tuition is the revenue side. Completely different. And they don't even know the expenditure side that easily. One professor teaches multiple classes which include all kinds of students, fulltime, parttime, day, evening, on campus, sattelite campus. Grad students are teaching classes. TA's are teaching. It's extremely complicated.

?? Expenditures far far exceed tuition revenue. Which necessarily means that the expenditures per student are higher than the tuition per student.

 

[upstater]

The money is allocated for athletics.

This isn’t Dave Benedict falling $40m short of his budget. They have committed institutional support at the beginning of the fiscal year. He has to stay within those budget parameters.

Agreed. I never blamed Benedict here. All I said is that there are institutional pressures which can't continue into the future. Not when they are slashing things. If you had a surplus somewhere and a deficit elsewhere, you could paper things over. But when you have twin deficits, choices must be made.

 

[Forte]

Former Fox Sports Networks President Bob Thompson in video above doesn't seem eye to eye with what is happening. Potentially a view into why Fox is hesitant. He thinks the money seems high for its value.

"There's not a lot of people buying basketball only..... you dont really see a lot of people clamoring throwing around a lot of money for regular season basketball."

... "it's a bit of a commodity because there is so much out there"

"Let ESPN foot the bill."

"It's not technically NY DMA. But its close." ... There ya all go.