OT - Uconn to Join Hocky East

[prankster]

UConn and Notre Dame are both heading to Hockey East!

 

[SubbaBub]

Not a done deal until the $$ is figured out, but.... Oh Yeah!

http://www.courant.com/sports/colle...s-on-uconn-20120509,0,5452681.story?track=rss

 

[BarkingDog]

This is good news and more evidence of Herbst's desire to make UConn a major player in college athletics.

 

[CL82]

I don't know. It seems like a money pit to me.

 

[Walker11]

Reggie Evan shoves Mike Conley in a play that would have been a Flagrant 1 if it was seen by the refs and then he flops when Z Bo was posting up too hard. Wow.

 

[3rdbass]

Wow moving up to the same league as Providence. Sounds funny! I know Boston College and BU are in this league. Good news! Sounds like hockey is making a step in the right direction. Now hopefully Football will follow.

 

[Danzz]

"... upgrading the program at about $1.3 million just in scholarships..."
Currently Uconn doesn't have any scholarships.

 

[Ricky1Moore]

Now if we can just get into the SEC for football...

 

[prankster]

"... upgrading the program at about $1.3 million just in scholarships..."
Currently Uconn doesn't have any scholarships.

The "cost" of a scholarship is often misstated (misrepresented?)....

The actual cost to the institution, to put one more chair into the classroom, approaches zero.

 

[UCONNJACK]

The "cost" of a scholarship is often misstated (misrepresented?)....

The actual cost to the institution, to put one more chair into the classroom, approaches zero.

The athletic department must pay the University for the full cost of each athletic scholarship. There is a signficant cost to upgrade the hockey program.

 

[UConnSportsGuy]

The athletic department must pay the University for the full cost of each athletic scholarship. There is a signficant cost to upgrade the hockey program.

Yes, but it is just a financial exercise...shifting budget from athletic department to the University master fund. The true cost to UConn (which is really what matters at the end of the day) is almost nothing.

 

[upstater]

The "cost" of a scholarship is often misstated (misrepresented?)....

The actual cost to the institution, to put one more chair into the classroom, approaches zero.

??? Come again? How did you figure this? There is a direct correlation between seats and resources. Even in faculty teaching contracts, we have a minimum number of seats and a maximum. I would argue it's the very basis upon which we are paid. Funds flow to departments based on seats, and practically every single department decision is made with seats in mind. I would say that each and every body is considered in any calculation.

 

[upstater]

Yes, but it is just a financial exercise...shifting budget from athletic department to the University master fund. The true cost to UConn (which is really what matters at the end of the day) is almost nothing.

I really want to know how you guys came up with this. It flies in the face of everything I know about how universities and departments are run. The bean counters look at bodies to determine how much support each department gets.

 

[prankster]

??? Come again? How did you figure this? There is a direct correlation between seats and resources. Even in faculty teaching contracts, we have a minimum number of seats and a maximum. I would argue it's the very basis upon which we are paid. Funds flow to departments based on seats, and practically every single department decision is made with seats in mind. I would say that each and every body is considered in any calculation.

I sat on the board of my kids school for two years and had a nice long talk with the treasurer, about scholarships, during a budget meeting.

See, we had a "scholarship fund" and for whatever reason it simply seemed to accrue. We never expended a lot of effort seeking out scholarship students.

We figured out that, unless we were actually displacing a paying student from the classroom, filling an available seat with a scholarship student actually cost us nothing.

It didn't cost us an extra teacher, classroom, building....no extra electricity or heat....nothing.

So, we could move the cash from the scholarship fund (where it was just sitting around and getting all dusty and everything) and instead put it to good use in our budget for the upcoming school year, as cash flow.

But, the important thing we learned is that, even if the scholarship fund was exhausted, the kids on scholarship cost us nothing (unless and until we had a waiting list of paying students, that were being displaced).

Now, UConn is a pretty big operation, and frankly, in one of those big ass 100's level lectures down in Von Der Maden, you probably won't notice whether there are 900 or 950 students attending. The same with some Chem 100s level course with 350 kids in a lecture hall...

To a great extent, the 100s level courses are pretty elastic, and the 200s level courses are sometimes not entirely full....

UConn has around 18,000 undergrads in Storrs.....somehow I feel that the additional 18 scholarship hockey players (plus the mandatory 18 "offset" for women's scholarship athletics) doesn't upset the apple cart too much....and they probably will not have to increase staffing in too many departments to absorb this sudden influx.

At least....that's my reasoning.

Oh....and I agree with you, up front, about this being about bean counters....cost shifting around, between departments is what it is all about...

But at the top level, the actual cost to the school?

Aproaches zero...

 

[upstater]

I sat on the board of my kids school for two years and had a nice long talk with the treasurer, about scholarships, during a budget meeting.

See, we had a "scholarship fund" and for whatever reason it simply seemed to accrue. We never expended a lot of effort seeking out scholarship students.

We figured out that, unless we were actually displacing a paying student from the classroom, filling an available seat with a scholarship student actually cost us nothing.

It didn't cost us an extra teacher, classroom, building....no extra electricity or heat....nothing.

So, we could move the cash from the scholarship fund (where it was just sitting around and getting all dusty and everything) and instead put it to good use in our budget for the upcoming school year, as cash flow.

But, the important thing we learned is that, even if the scholarship fund was exhausted, the kids on scholarship cost us nothing (unless and until we had a waiting list of paying students, that were being displaced).

Now, UConn is a pretty big operation, and frankly, in one of those big ass 100's level lectures down in Von Der Maden, you probably won't notice whether there are 900 or 950 students attending. The same with some Chem 100s level course with 350 kids in a lecture hall...

To a great extent, the 100s level courses are pretty elastic, and the 200s level courses are sometimes not entirely full....

UConn has around 18,000 undergrads in Storrs.....somehow I feel that the additional 18 scholarship hockey players (plus the mandatory 18 "offset" for women's scholarship athletics) doesn't upset the apple cart too much....and they probably will not have to increase staffing in too many departments to absorb this sudden influx.

At least....that's my reasoning.

A state university is not a prep school.

There's a world of difference. The prep school does not have departments competing for students. Every department in a university competes for majors at the undergraduate level, and every department competes for students against other schools at the grad level. Funds are funneled to each department BASED on the number of students. These are two totally different things. This is especially true at universities where you have need blind admission policies, which naturally means that 35-40% of tuition money gets redistributed. At public schools, this redistribution is less (10-15%) of tuition. But for every student on full scholarship, that necessarily means one things: foregoing tuition/R&B money on those 36 hockey/women's scholarships. By the way, that huge lecture hall with 900 students employs various lecturers who are paid. They conduct labs outside the lecture and they are paid to grade the papers. No doubt, the 900 seat lectures are great for a department's bottom line since a lecturer makes a fraction of what a full-time faculty member will make, but those 900 seat classes are already figured into the cost of attendance and the price per student. It's the 900 student lecture that allows classes of 15 students at the advanced senior level. Now, I suppose at a place like Kentucky it might be argued that a player will never see what a 15 student class looks like, but I doubt this is going to be the way things go for most UConn hockey players and their women scholarship counterparts. They, like all other students, will take classes in which there will be an average of 25 students or so. Contractually, faculty have to meet minimums (we have to have a certain number of students in our classes) and we also have caps (we're not expected to have more than 50 students per class that we're responsible for grading). On the basis of that labor, our departments are reimbursed by the university. Really, we're in the business of claiming bodies. So, by all means, send those hockey players to my classes, and the university will then take a head count and pay my department for them.

A body is always worth $$$. Cynical but true.

 

[BarkingDog]

Aside from the cost of the scholarships, real or otherwise, I'm guessing there will be a very real cost when the university builds a new hockey facility. Also, wondering if the school will be able to get a contract to have the games on SNY.
What would be awesome is an annual state tournament, kind of like the Beanpot, that could include powers Yale, Quinnipiac along with Sacred Heart and UConn. I think that would generate a lot of interest.

 

[freescooter]

upstater and prankster,

you guys are actually both right. It is a real cost to the athletic department in that they give the university a check (well not really a check but a transfer of funds) for the cost of the scholarships each year. And the university records that as income. But on the other hand, if the university gives the athletic department a budget of 18 scholarships, well it is more or less a wash in real life. Further, there is a fixed cost to provide a university education, but once you build the buildings and hire the professors, the marginal cost of teaching 18 more students is pretty low, maybe even zero...not that much different from how a friend of mine in the printing business used to describe things...it cost $50 to print 1 business card but only $100.50 to print 500 cards...but it cost $10,000 to print the first business card, after that the marginal cost is pretty small. So it depends on how you are looking at the "cost"...as an accountant looks at it or as an economist looks at it.

 

[upstater]

upstater and prankster,

you guys are actually both right. It is a real cost to the athletic department in that they give the university a check (well not really a check but a transfer of funds) for the cost of the scholarships each year. And the university records that as income. But on the other hand, if the university gives the athletic department a budget of 18 scholarships, well it is more or less a wash in real life. Further, there is a fixed cost to provide a university education, but once you build the buildings and hire the professors, the marginal cost of teaching 18 more students is pretty low, maybe even zero...not that much different from how a friend of mine in the printing business used to describe things...it cost $50 to print 1 business card but only $100.50 to print 500 cards...but it cost $10,000 to print the first business card, after that the marginal cost is pretty small. So it depends on how you are looking at the "cost"...as an accountant looks at it or as an economist looks at it.

This is wrong. I'll say it again. We are reimbursed for every student that takes a class with us. This naturally means we get fewer resources for fewer students. Now, that's a departmental exigency. We live and die by counting bodies, and my labor is monetized in terms of the bodies I teach. My pay is even directly related to this. On the university level, you're ignoring the fact that the athletic department only reimburses for the cost of scholarships, and that beyond this, there is the actual cost of attendance which is a lot more than the cost of scholarships. The school makes up that cost, and as long as the school is not charging tuition to defray the actual cost for the additional 36 students, it's losing money. No matter how you try to get around it, there will be a loss there. I'm not arguing that this means hockey is too expensive, but rather that someone has to pay for it at some level. Either hockey will make enough money to pay for the 36 scholarships or the university will take a loss. That loss is not a phantom loss especially since the university reimburses its departments on the basis of those bodies.

Hiring professors is also not a permanent thing. There is a lot of movement especially among new hires. At my former school, they hired 10 new people in 6 years (prior to 2008) and not a single one of them stayed on. There is a great deal of turnover. So, what happens is this: the dean/provost look at the number of student bodies taught by that department, and they give them resources accordingly. Since there is an overall cap on admission (i.e. the size of the freshman class is capped) this naturally means that departments that attract more students get more resources, but in the end, the total amount of money is the same. The only thing that changes is that the school has to subsidize 36 students beyond the tuition reimbursement from the AD.