Comments | pdxstraycat: School Crisis

pdxstraycat

School Crisis

Oct 15, 2005 19:08

And no, this has nothing to do with E. coli in the city water ( Read more... )

Comments 4

robotapocalypse October 16 2005, 05:45:24 UTC

Another factor is the more than lucrative TV sports contracts, and the sports apparel contracts. Does this money count as revenue?

Even if it does, it probably does not cover costs outside of the athletics program. If you've got a 4th edition of Maasik and Solomon's Signs of Life in the USA: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers laying around, take a look at Eitzen's "The Contradictions of Big-Time College Sport" in chapter 8. Admittedly the data cited is oldish (mid-90s, mostly) and the article is mostly about Title IX issues, but Eitzen shatters some popular notions about just how much money is made by college athletics.

"About fifty out of the NCAA's eight hundred member institutions make more money on their athletic programs than they spend. The losses are covered by their schools' general revenue funds.(f. 18) It is commonly believed that men's basketball and especially football bring in the funds that pay for the rest of the athletic budget. But, for the most part, this is a fiction. The NCAA reported that only 17 ( ... )

robotapocalypse October 16 2005, 06:28:06 UTC

I'm still uncertain as to what counts as revenue. Did this guy factor in jersey sales, sweat shirts, and other apparel that is bought at the bookstore and is directly related to the sports team via the branded logo of the school (which at Div. 1-A schools is largely for the express purpose of marketing the team)? What, exactly, is he basing his figures on (cause I don't have the book). Have other people come up with different figures? And if sports programs don't make money for universities, why are they there? I've read that the increased enrollment following winning championships is also a myth, so what is the draw? I suppose that's what doesn't make sense to me. Granted, I'm thinking only of Div. 1-A schools here and he's writing about all Div. 1 schools. I dunno. This is all hurting my head and I'm tired. The long and short of it is that building at state schools has been rampant for the past decade, and even if athletics programs do not contribute, they have probably gotten better about being a drain on university resources. That ( ... )

robotapocalypse October 16 2005, 16:40:11 UTC

That, coupled with extra research funding, alumni donations, and other sources of income might account for at least some of the shift away from tax dollars.It's not that state universities are shifting away from tax dollars: it's that states are cutting funding for their universities and driving those universities to seek funding elsewhere. The ties to the "elsewhere" are what's problematic ( ... )

pdxstraycat October 17 2005, 14:19:42 UTC

But it's precisely the causal link that you are talking about here that the article doesn't supply information for. What you have said is that states are offering less money to public schools, right? But this article bases that claim on the percentage of money the school gets from the state. All I'm trying to point out is that if the state gives the same amount of money (adjusted for inflation and a little growth for the university) but the university is also going out into the corporate sector a whole lot more than it did in 1991, then the percentage of revenue from the state would shrink because it is relative to the other sources of income. I'm not saying that state spending hasn't decreased, but I am questioning claiming that the whole decrease as represented by a percentage of revenue (when revenue isn't even defined) is misleading and I want the writer of the article to burn in hell. Oh, wait, no I just want to know what counts as revenue, how much money states are actually giving to schools and how that amount compares in ( ... )