UConn bracing for ‘deep cuts’ to sports and academics

[Adios]

Here we go with weak-minded emo rants again.

 

[upstater]

Where does there operating budget come from then. Does the legislature subsidize OOS tuition as well as in state?

The state subsidy doesn't cover the whole amount, so it all depends on how you look at it. Look at the Florida schools where OOS is in line with expenditures. Specifically, look at UofF. The rest of the budget includes revenue from research ($938m a year) and revenue from the endowment ($1.85b x 7% a year = $130m). That's over a billion right there, the majority of the budget. Tuition and state subsidy is a slice of that.

I'm reading the posts here and many people are of the opinion that the high tuitions are due to bloat.

I'll point out a few things:

1. Administrative costs over the last couple of decades have skyrocketed from 1% of the budget to between 7-10%. That's ridiculous. BUT, it doesn't explain the 1,000%+ tuition increase.

2. Tenured full-time faculty at top institutions have dropped from 75%+ two decades ago to -20% today. The vast majority of classes are taught by part-timers earning less than minimum wage.

3. Total expenditures (overall budget) is keeping pace with inflation. Not outpacing inflation. & this is being managed at a time when the school is spending on facilities, new technology which is ridiculously costly, and super high rises in employee health plans. Clearly, instruction is being slashed to be able to afford the rest.

4. So why are prices rising so fast? Consider these numbers: In 1990, the state of Florida spent $8,294 (# is adjusted for inflation to compare with 2010 dollars) per full-time student. 20 years later, it spent $6,150 per full-time student in real dollars.

5. In 1990, 56% of the U. of Florida's budget was covered by the state. In 2010, that number had dropped to 30%. I'm sure it has gotten worse in the last decade, as that has been the trend nationwide.

True but are you charged more than the student brings in?

Yes, the entirety of the tuition goes to the college. Our goal is to keep that head count aligned with our salaries and benefits.

Or alternatively, the school could simply not count athletes toward the OOS cap.

Of course it could. Many colleges already do. But the schools like UConn that operate units like a business (i.e. money-in/money-out of each unit) try to maintain a standard that is easily explicable to all units.

I'm just not a fan of inflated inter-department charges. It is, in my view deceptive accounting. I feel the same way about the cost to UConn for the use of the Rent or the XL Center.

My take on all this has always been that, even at the schools that are supposedly making a profit, the true budget is obfuscated in a way that withholds the truth from the real customers, the parents and students. In other words, ADs lose a lot more money than they show. If you listen to Jay Bilas, this is being done to hide the profits from the student athletes. But I disagree entirely. The actual losses are diminished and kept hidden so that the parents don't realize a huge chunk of that sports & recreation fee (now between $1k and $2k) goes to subsidize the AD. If parents really dug in there and realized their kid might finish with $5-7k in loans that is pure athletic subsidy, they might have a problem with it. I've read articles where U. Michigan and U. Texas owe half a billion dollars in loans for athletic facilities. The payments for these loans were not being made by the AD. But by the academic side. U. Michigan's AD just started defraying some of the cost of these loans for the first time within the last few years. But the Stadium was redone over 15 years ago, and the cost never appeared on the AD's balance sheet.

 

[BlueDogs]

Apparently, to the blind on this board, those of us who understand math are "village idiots." Football at the University of CT from a financial standpoint right now is an absolute liability. No one can refute that. And it is completely non-competitive, has been for years and is clearly direction-less. So what do we keep it around for? The P5 game of musical chairs has been played for the better part of a decade and we are still standing. Does anyone really think that is going to change anytime soon? Unfortunately, this is now becoming about business, plain and simple. Do I wish football worked? Of course. But the undeniable truth is hasn't, we are now in a non-football league and it's time to cut the cord and be financially responsible. For the football supporters, give me evidence why the plug shouldn't be pulled. What does it do for the University or the athletic program now except lose money?

Then cut women’s basketball, all soccer, baseball, softball, diving, track and field, hockey and every other “money losing sport”. It’s fascinating how one is the problem but the others aren’t. Cut the work force by 5% and you’d save 42.5 million a year...and probably few would notice other than the tenored professors teaching 2 classes a semester. Also, eliminate the Intergovernmental charges and the problem goes away.

 

[UCTitleTown]

When I was in college many moons ago, I proposed making all of the state universities branches of UConn. Western would be UConn-Danbury, Southern would be UConn-New Haven, Central would be UConn-New Britain, and Eastern would be UConn-Willimantic. There's got to be some synergy in purchasing, administration etc.

 

[T-Squared]

Start with cutting Susan Herbst and her albatross contract.

 

[the Q]

When I was in college many moons ago, I proposed making all of the state universities branches of UConn. Western would be UConn-Danbury, Southern would be UConn-New Haven, Central would be UConn-New Britain, and Eastern would be UConn-Willimantic. There's got to be some synergy in purchasing, administration etc.

Absolutely.

Makes too much sense to actually happen.

 

[Chief00]

So it begins...

I hope that any plan:

1) changes the way the school accounts for the cost of scholarships. Charging the full out of state amount isn't an accurate reflection of cost. Virtually no one actually pays that rate; and

2) looks very hard the rental cost of campus facilities owned by the State of Connecticut. We are subsidizing the losses of the CDRA.

Number 2 is key.

 

[Caronimo]

Caronimo ...... aren’t you one of the many posters that said UConn would never move to the Big East ?

The reality is that football provides a terrible return on the University’s investment, and impairs its image.

The many- many millions of dollars used to subsidize UConn football could be used to expand financial aid to UConn students, offer merit scholarships for exemplary students, or a number of other ways to expand the academic footprint of UConn.

I don't think so?.... but you can go look at my history of posts and see if you want... If I said that then I must have had a few DIPA's that day

 

[HuskyHawk]

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

Inter-departmental accounting is irrelevant to the issue of whether the UConn atheistic deficit is large as reported. Because it’s a university wide number.

Michigan is clearly making a ton of money on OOS students. I doubt that their cost is any higher than Florida State’s.

 

[upstater]

Inter-departmental accounting is irrelevant to the issue of whether the UConn atheistic deficit is large as reported. Because it’s a university wide number.

Michigan is clearly making a ton of money on OOS students. I doubt that their cost is any higher than Florida State’s.

Since university governance falls under the purview of all interested parties (i.e. you have people from all units involved in decision-making), then it's important for administration to maintain standards. This is why it's done using similar methods. As I wrote in an earlier post, however, I think the losses are almost always understated in order to hide them from the customers really footing the bill: parents and students.

Here's U. Michigan's expenditure-per-student:

Michigan gets much less subsidy from the state (14%) than Florida does (30%), which explains the very high tuition: General Fund Budget Snapshot | U-M Public Affairs

In order to figure out the expenditure per student, I would look at how much tuition contributes to the budget. Tuition at Michigan accounts for 73% of the budget. That means that expenditure per student is tuition + 27% of the budget. At Florida, it is only 18% of the budget. This is an enormous difference.

Using my method for Florida, I take the average tuition paid by both OOS students (16% of total) and IS (84%), and I get an average tuition per student of $9,945. This means you're almost at $50k expenditure, but then you take financial aid into account. It's 4% of the total budget at Florida, so remove $2k from expenditure.

At Michigan, 50% of the students are out of state. So the average tuition is $32,300. 3x as much as U. Florida's. But it's 73% of the budget. So the total expenditure per student would be $45,000. But financial aid is 12%, so the actual expenditure is reduced to $39,600. That's $10k less than the charge for out of state tuition.

The big difference between both schools is that 50% of Michigan students are OOS, while only 16% of Florida students are. This accounts for the wide disparity in the fiscal health of both schools.

Michigan also spends a ridiculous 14% of its budget on administration. 30 years ago the national average was 1% at state universities.

The sweet spot for a discerning parent would be to find out the expenditure for instruction (ie. remove administration and the other perks). You can do this by looking at each school's reports to the US Dept. of Ed. It tells you exactly how much is spent in each area. I looked at this a while ago as we were sizing up schools. It's enlightening if you believe that your kid will get a better education at schools that spend more on instruction. You do have to account for how scientific research tends to cause administrative bloat, but by and large, I would want more resources in instruction for an undergraduate student.

 

[HuskyHawk]

Since university governance falls under the purview of all interested parties (i.e. you have people from all units involved in decision-making), then it's important for administration to maintain standards. This is why it's done using similar methods. As I wrote in an earlier post, however, I think the losses are almost always understated in order to hide them from the customers really footing the bill: parents and students.

Here's U. Michigan's expenditure-per-student:

Michigan gets much less subsidy from the state (14%) than Florida does (30%), which explains the very high tuition: General Fund Budget Snapshot | U-M Public Affairs

In order to figure out the expenditure per student, I would look at how much tuition contributes to the budget. Tuition at Michigan accounts for 73% of the budget. That means that expenditure per student is tuition + 27% of the budget. At Florida, it is only 18% of the budget. This is an enormous difference.

Using my method for Florida, I take the average tuition paid by both OOS students (16% of total) and IS (84%), and I get an average tuition per student of $9,945. This means you're almost at $50k expenditure, but then you take financial aid into account. It's 4% of the total budget at Florida, so remove $2k from expenditure.

At Michigan, 50% of the students are out of state. So the average tuition is $32,300. 3x as much as U. Florida's. But it's 73% of the budget. So the total expenditure per student would be $45,000. But financial aid is 12%, so the actual expenditure is reduced to $39,600. That's $10k less than the charge for out of state tuition.

The big difference between both schools is that 50% of Michigan students are OOS, while only 16% of Florida students are. This accounts for the wide disparity in the fiscal health of both schools.

Michigan also spends a ridiculous 14% of its budget on administration. 30 years ago the national average was 1% at state universities.

The sweet spot for a discerning parent would be to find out the expenditure for instruction (ie. remove administration and the other perks). You can do this by looking at each school's reports to the US Dept. of Ed. It tells you exactly how much is spent in each area. I looked at this a while ago as we were sizing up schools. It's enlightening if you believe that your kid will get a better education at schools that spend more on instruction. You do have to account for how scientific research tends to cause administrative bloat, but by and large, I would want more resources in instruction for an undergraduate student.

As it turns out I’m college shopping right now for my soon to be HS senior. Most likely private schools though. Is there reason to believe the resources for instruction are higher at smaller private schools? It’s an assumption but I don’t know if the evidence backs it up.

 

[upstater]

As it turns out I’m college shopping right now for my soon to be HS senior. Most likely private schools though. Is there reason to believe the resources for instruction are higher at smaller private schools? It’s an assumption but I don’t know if the evidence backs it up.

Every school is different. Many private schools are top heavy administratively. Many private schools spend a much smaller amount on each student than public schools. Consider: if 40-50% of the budget is financial aid, and tuition funds a huge amount of the budget (80%), then of course the expenditure per student is going to be much lower. That might not matter though if the school puts almost al of that lower expenditure toward instruction. At places like Michigan or Florida, only 60% goes toward instruction.

Here's a link for you: The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System

 

[UCTitleTown]

I just hope my daughter's school doesn't cut her aid package or she's transferring back to CT

 

[TheChamps990411]

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

People across the COUNTRY are losing and have lost their jobs.

 

[freescooter]

Anything UConn has in swimming, track and field, cross country, or golf needs to go first.

As a northeast school these should be the priorities.

Men's and Women's soccer
Field Hockey
Men's and Women's hockey
Baseball
Softball
Men's and Women's basketball
Football
Volleyball

From there start adding sports as able. Sorry, not sorry, but no one thinks of UConn for the sports I listed above.

Baseball and softball are priorities? Seriously? They play for the first 2 months in Florida and Arizona then in miserable conditions until the last 2 weeks of the year. Yeah we’ve had a little success in baseball but not that much in all seriousness. Softball has been dreadful forever. Baseball hasn't been to Omaha since the 1970s.

Plus we really shouldnt take the Big East as our model. Those are all modest sized regional private mostly Catholic schools. The only thing we have in common is basketball.

if it were up to me though I’d drop the whole department to D3 and sponsor more sports not fewer. Turn The basketball center into the student gym. Build statues to Geno and Calhoun and name some award after them.

 

[Chin Diesel]

Baseball and softball are priorities? Seriously? They play for the first 2 months in Florida and Arizona then in miserable conditions until the last 2 weeks of the year. Yeah we’ve had a little success in baseball but not that much in all seriousness. Softball has been dreadful forever. Baseball hasn't been to Omaha since the 1970s.

Plus we really shouldnt take the Big East as our model. Those are all modest sized regional private mostly Catholic schools. The only thing we have in common is basketball.

if it were up to me though I’d drop the whole department to D3 and sponsor more sports not fewer. Turn The basketball center into the student gym. Build statues to Geno and Calhoun and name some award after them.

Yes, baseball has a long and storied amateur history in the northeast from Little League, American Legion, Cape Cod league and Sox and Yanks for pros. Baseball has plenty of relevance for a northeast university.

 

[CL82]

Oh I think baseball has had some successes:

 

[StllH8L8ner]

Oh I think baseball has had some successes:

View attachment 54691

Charles Nagy was my guy.
Didn't UConn just build a new baseball stadium? Yeah...I don't think baseball is being cut.

 

[CL82]

We’ve done pretty well, particularly lately.

 

[upstater]

Charles Nagy was my guy.
Didn't UConn just build a new baseball stadium? Yeah...I don't think baseball is being cut.

Poor planning is going to lead to things ever more dreadful. These administrators like to shell out the dough in good times on the principle of "Don't just stand there, do something," but they aren't planning for the long-term. And when leadership can't acknowledge its mistakes, it sends the bill down the road and begins to slash at the university's core.

It mazes me that we have epidemiologists, business schools, med centers, catastrophe planning experts at these universities, and yet we run them like there's never been an epidemic before, or a financial crisis.

If the decision is to not acknowledge the poor decisions, and instead hack away at the core mission, then they are leaving behind a much poorer place.

 

[huskysupporter]

Cut some of the man’s and women’s basketball coaches salary and allocate it to football coaching pool.

 

[shizzle787]

I said a long time ago we should have gone down to the minimum to save money. Here are the sports we should keep:

Men's: Baseball, basketball, football, golf, hockey, soccer, swimming and diving
Women's: Basketball, field hockey, hockey, lacrosse, rowing, soccer, softball, swimming and diving, volleyball

 

[StllH8L8ner]

Poor planning is going to lead to things ever more dreadful. These administrators like to shell out the dough in good times on the principle of "Don't just stand there, do something," but they aren't planning for the long-term. And when leadership can't acknowledge its mistakes, it sends the bill down the road and begins to slash at the university's core.

It mazes me that we have epidemiologists, business schools, med centers, catastrophe planning experts at these universities, and yet we run them like there's never been an epidemic before, or a financial crisis.

If the decision is to not acknowledge the poor decisions, and instead hack away at the core mission, then they are leaving behind a much poorer place.

Agreed and I feel like this is the state of Connecticut in general. I stopped watching the local news because it's too depressing but I'm waiting for the day when tolls in CT are absolutely necessary because of the financial impact of Covid when our braintrust has been trying to jam it through for years. We're told from a very young age to keep 2-3 months worth of bills saved up in case of emergency yet something like this happens and we hear "well we never saw this coming so we need to make some tough decisions".

 

[David 76]

Cut some of the man’s and women’s basketball coaches salary and allocate it to football coaching pool.

Not a dime back!

 

[HooperScooper]

Did anyone see this article from Pat Forde today? Kind of harsh. I hope they're not cutting any sports. But as a mostly men's basketball fan I'm most concerned with that team.

Whatever the number of cut sports turns out to be, here’s what Benedict needs to say to the athletes he is kneecapping at an already traumatic time in their lives: “As a university, and an athletic department, we utterly failed. As the athletic director, I utterly failed. And so did the ADs who preceded me. And you young people are going to take the fall for it.”

Benedict and his predecessors, and everyone in a decison-making capacity at UConn, has perpetrated breathtaking administrative malpractice when it comes to football. They have screwed up in every way imaginable for damn near a decade. They have made terrible hires, agreed to preposterous contracts and frittered away what little cachet UConn football ever had.

UConn Has Only Itself to Blame for Sports Cuts

A series of mistakes around its football program over the last decade cost the Huskies four sports.

www.si.com