Bankrolled By Students

What happens when this becomes a choice for student contribution?

Yet other universities continue to follow in their footsteps. They all have child-like dreams that they’ll be the one to break through the mediocrity of mid-tier Division I. And their false ambitions are largely bankrolled by one group with little say in the matter and even fewer resources: students.

In an investigation published this week, The Chronicle of Higher Educationand Huffington Post found that in just the past five years, public universities funneled $10.3 billion in mandatory student fees and other subsidies to their athletic programs. During that time, the average athletic subsidy increased 16 percent, and student fees, which accounted for nearly half of all subsidies, increased by 10 percent.

The report found that the subsidies tended to be highest at colleges where ticket sales and other revenue were the lowest. In other words, students were forced to pay mandatory fees to support athletics even though many didn’t care enough about any of the teams to even show up for a game.

When I first wrote about this phenomenon, I focused on the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. At the time, its student fees paid for 80 percent of the subsidy provided to the athletic department. Officials told me they expected the share of student support to fall over time as their teams established winning records and garnered more outside support.

So what has happened at Greensboro since the late 1990s?

According to The Chronicle/Huff Post analysis, Greensboro students today provide 81 percent of the subsidy. In other words, nothing has changed except that the department’s budget has quadrupled since the late 1990s and the student fee for athletics has almost doubled, to about $700 a year per student.

Bankrolled by Students