UConn bracing for ‘deep cuts’ to sports and academics

[uconngb]

We are not cutting football. Why do people keep bringing this up?....

Whether we are or we aren’t.......the correct answer is that we should. It literally does nothing for the athletic program except lose money and create headaches.

 

[StllH8L8ner]

Whether we are or we aren’t.......the correct answer is that we should. It literally does nothing for the athletic program except lose money and create headaches.

Cut football, keep tailgating.

 

[WrenchFan69]

Unfortunately, it's time to get down to NCAA minimum for at least men's sports.
Basketball, Football, Baseball, Hockey, Soccer are untouchable. Need 1 more to meet NCAA reqs. Tennis seems the cheapest? Would say XC but it's unlikely to keep XC and cut track.

Women's the untouchables would have to be Basketball, Field Hockey, Softball, Ice Hockey, Soccer, Volleyball, Lax. Need 1 from what remains. Tennis or Rowing, maybe you keep XC and Track as the coaches and athletes would overlap.

 

[JohnFSilver]

You guys have to really look at the hard costs.

scholarship elimination is not an acceptable way to cut. That money is a chargeback.

So, salaries of coaches and administrators are No. 1. This is how the “third coach” of a softball team making 50k part-time gets eliminated. Or, people in the marketing department.

Where is their money to cut? In equipment, travel, non-field coach salaries, coach salaries and administrators. In the AD office, administrative salaries and marketing efforts.

If they eliminate golf, the hard savings are coach salaries, travel and equipment. Scholarships can’t be used to make the cuts. Actually, you are taking away revenue from admissions. So, there is a balance there.

i think this is gonna suck because people will end up losing their job across the university.

 

[hardcorehusky]

So the cut football village idiots come out due to Lincoln Millstein's uninformed article. We have gone through this routine so many times, let may say this one last time- if you are rooting against a program of your "favorite university", then you aren't a fan. If you think cutting football is the answer, you need to understand how athletic departments work.

 

[the Q]

Unfortunately, it's time to get down to NCAA minimum for at least men's sports.
Basketball, Football, Baseball, Hockey, Soccer are untouchable. Need 1 more to meet NCAA reqs. Tennis seems the cheapest? Would say XC but it's unlikely to keep XC and cut track.

Women's the untouchables would have to be Basketball, Field Hockey, Softball, Ice Hockey, Soccer, Volleyball, Lax. Need 1 from what remains. Tennis or Rowing, maybe you keep XC and Track as the coaches and athletes would overlap.

I remember one book I read about big money in college football that talked about crew as a great counter to football for title ix. That’s why land locked Kansas st has a crew team. So that doesn’t go anywhere.

 

[Platt81]

I remember one book I read about big money in college football that talked about crew as a great counter to football for title ix. That’s why land locked Kansas st has a crew team. So that doesn’t go anywhere.

They’re landlocked, not water free. Rowing isn’t done in the ocean, it’s typically in a river or narrow lake that I’m sure there’s plenty of in Kansas.

 

[Get a Job]

Can't drop womens sports teams b/c of football. The teams you cite (track and swim) the men and women basically share facilities and coaches, and are fairly low cost (buses for road trips, minimal equipment costs) I know for mens swimming, there are very few scholorships and I believe most are endowed. Not much savings there

You're damn right most are endowed. Those speedos though...

 

[upstater]

I'm not following this. Say MSRP tuition is $100. The master's student gets a grant of $25 as an incentive to attend so the revenue number associated with him is $75. Are you say that the the unit only gets credit for $50, which would be actual revenue less discount? Because that makes zero sense from an accounting position.

Back to scholarships... I believe that scholarship academic grants are coming out of a single pool so you need to account for how you allocate it, but sports scholarships are not using that money. It is just a discount of tuition to cost. If schools truly use a per student expenditures made analysis the cost should be much less than the nominal (MSRP) tuition.

The way we do it at SUNY is we count total expenditures per student. So, the tuition may very well only be $7k for in state students, but the unit is spending $20k per student. Every in-state student counts as a $13k loss for the unit right off the bat. So that money must be made up in other ways, mainly through MA students, foreign students, grants, fundraising, etc.

"If schools truly use a per student expenditures made analysis the cost should be much less than the nominal (MSRP) tuition."

Tuition makes up between 25%-33% of the total expenditure per student.

 

[upstater]

I actually don't doubt that Upstater is right about how they account for it. It doesn't make it accurate or meaningful.

I fondly recall Dick Norgaard as my UConn finance 101 professor trolling his wife (who was my managerial accounting professor). He put up a picture of the Empire State Building and said, what is this worth? What would an accountant say it is worth? The answer: nothing. It's fully depreciated. It sits on the books as zero.

I think the same concept is at work here. The actual cost of an athletic scholarship is not full out of state, because you would never replace those students (often minorities and underprivileged) with students paying full freight.

At state universities? It's pretty competitive. There's actually a cap at most schools on out-of-staters and foreign students, as they try to reserve seats for taxpaying in-staters.

Schools have budgets which are finite. Any money not arriving lowers the total budget. The money is unfortunately very real. And I say unfortunately because I could make an excellent case that my classes, which don't even require electricity and lighting, are bargains for the university and they're always in the black. But the accounting system works against us (and for us, in a way, since getting rid of the Humanities would skyrocket costs across the university).

 

[CL82]

The way we do it at SUNY is we count total expenditures per student. So, the tuition may very well only be $7k for in state students, but the unit is spending $20k per student. Every in-state student counts as a $13k loss for the unit right off the bat. So that money must be made up in other ways, mainly through MA students, foreign students, grants, fundraising, etc.

"If schools truly use a per student expenditures made analysis the cost should be much less than the nominal (MSRP) tuition."

Tuition makes up between 25%-33% of the total expenditure per student.

When you say tuition makes up between 25 to 30% of total student expenditure, how are you defining tuition? Is that the actual net amount received or the gross amount listed as tuition before grants? How is the shortfall made up?

If spending is 20,000 per student, what is undiscounted out of state tuition?

I always appreciate your expertise and wealth of information on this subject.

 

[CL82]

At state universities? It's pretty competitive. There's actually a cap at most schools on out-of-staters and foreign students, as they try to reserve seats for taxpaying in-staters.

Schools have budgets which are finite. Any money not arriving lowers the total budget. The money is unfortunately very real. And I say unfortunately because I could make an excellent case that my classes, which don't even require electricity and lighting, are bargains for the university and they're always in the black. But the accounting system works against us (and for us, in a way, since getting rid of the Humanities would skyrocket costs across the university).

Why would eliminating humanities, not that I’m advocating for that, raise costs? Is it just that the other options to make up those credits would be more expensive to produce?

 

[David 76]

Can't we just cut classes and leave sports?

 

[Pgh2Storrs]

XC/Track consolidated recently under Coach Roy for both the men’s and women’s programs, which I assume went a long way in helping to cut down on administrative costs. I understand that, in the grand scheme of things, track isn’t a marquee sport but it would be a great loss to see those programs cut after so much success.

 

[dvegas]

Title IX people. Not cutting women's teams. So in those minor sports (tennis, swim, track\CC) the men tend to receive fewer scholarships and "ride" off the fact the coaches are one and the same (i.e., Chris Maiello coach's both men's and women's swimming). Those men's teams take the same busses as the women to most competitions. Not a ton of savings dropping those men's sports.

 

[HooperScooper]

Can't we just cut classes and leave sports?

Worked for North Carolina.

 

[upstater]

Why would eliminating humanities, not that I’m advocating for that, raise costs? Is it just that the other options to make up those credits would be more expensive to produce?

Because our students pay the same for credit hour as students in engineering, but our faculty gets paid less, and our classroom costs are practically nil. In this respect, there's a big profit for the university.

 

[upstater]

When you say tuition makes up between 25 to 30% of total student expenditure, how are you defining tuition? Is that the actual net amount received or the gross amount listed as tuition before grants? How is the shortfall made up?

If spending is 20,000 per student, what is undiscounted out of state tuition?

I always appreciate your expertise and wealth of information on this subject.

Out-of-state tuition is different at every school, but for the vast majority of publics, it far exceeds expenditures, especially foreign student tuition. Those students are big profit sources for the university.

The discount rate at state universities is really low compared to private schools. At private schools, you can expect on average a 40% discount. At state schools, it's less than 10%. And probably a lot less at many schools with low/free tuition programs, as in our NY state system, where programs like TAP and Excelsior provide all the funding for needy students. (& of course the SUNY Presidents were shocked to find out that a program like Excelsior [free tuition if you follow a rigid state created curriculum] could be passed but the state did not fully fund it [ie. they expected the schools to kick in for it]).

 

[huskeynut]

This cutting is coming to most colleges/ universities. There are those who have already cut up to 10% on salaries. Nobody should be surprised by any cuts the athletic department must make as well as the academic programs.

Cancelling the NCAA tournaments was a massive financial loss. Every university/ college is affected by this.

As to UConn football, I am not a fan of Edsel. His return plus 3 bad coaches prior have pretty much killed the football program. Let's see what happens this year with an indy schedule. If Edsel can't produce at least a 500 team this coming season, he needs to go.

 

[CL82]

Out-of-state tuition is different at every school, but for the vast majority of publics, it far exceeds expenditures, especially foreign student tuition. Those students are big profit sources for the university.

This is my point precisely. If the charge back for scholarship students is the full out of state rate it does not reflect the actual cost of education (including housing) of the student. Instead it is an idealized and typically unrealized number that reflect a disproportionate profit component. The cost of education piece would seem to be a more appropriate number as the inter-department charge-back.

Again, I always appreciate your insight on this stuff. I learn something pretty much every time you share it.

 

[Waquoit]

I think the entire UConn workforce (minus the people that seem to do most of the actual teaching) is paid at the top of the market. If they were paid less would the quality of the UConn experience be any less? But that's not how the game works.

 

[Get a Job]

This cutting is coming to most colleges/ universities. There are those who have already cut up to 10% on salaries. Nobody should be surprised by any cuts the athletic department must make as well as the academic programs.

Cancelling the NCAA tournaments was a massive financial loss. Every university/ college is affected by this.

As to UConn football, I am not a fan of Edsel. His return plus 3 bad coaches prior have pretty much killed the football program. Let's see what happens this year with an indy schedule. If Edsel can't produce at least a 500 team this coming season, he needs to go.

.500?! .500?! We can't even win a game! You're talking about .500?!

 

[upstater]

This is my point precisely. If the charge back for scholarship students is the full out of state rate it does not reflect the actual cost of education (including housing) of the student. Instead it is an idealized and typically unrealized number that reflect a disproportionate profit component. The cost of education piece would seem to be a more appropriate number as the inter-department charge-back.

Again, I always appreciate your insight on this stuff. I learn something pretty much every time you share it.

I see what you are saying. It's an excellent point. But it all depends on the actual price charged for out of state.

Some school's OOS tuition is still below the expenditure per student.

It varies widely.

But again you're going to run into the initial problem I laid out. All other units account for it in the same way. When my department brings in an out-of-state Masters student who pays far more for tuition than we spend on him/her, we don't keep the profit. The college does. It would be nice if we did!

& then, some states have a hard cap on the number of out of state students allowed. They preserve seats for in-staters by law. This means that, if athletic departments did not reimburse the academic side fully, every out-of-state athlete on scholarship is essentially a missed opportunity to profit from a a student willing to pay 50k.

And then, there's the final consideration. The academic side in the vast vast majority of cases subsidizes the entire athletic department, which makes this conversation moot.

Check this out:

University of Michigan OOS tuition: 49,350
University of Connecticut OOS tuition: 38,098
UConn students from New England: 23,424
USF: 17,324
UCF: 20,980
Florida St.: 21,683

 

[Kenny11]

Most of the other sports really don’t cost much. Football Costs a lot. I’m not saying to cut football but you can’t have a conversation about cutting sports without football being the first choice. I don’t want to cut any sport. Being a college athlete, especially at the division 1 level is a special thing and takes so much dedication. I would actually be in favor of adding sports if it was possible.