[CTcard]

Also, easy to identify the universities that are basketball schools (including, unfortunately, UConn).

Wondering if the UConn unfortunate comment is just a rivalry issue or something more?

There are a few that look like anomalies to me, and I suspect no longer true. Wisconsin, Michigan, and Florida are all listed as having basketball coaches as the highest paid employee - pretty football-centric places. Even California surprises me, though somewhere back in my memory I remember reading some article stating as much.

Judging from tuition increases and college and university spending increases, higher education has not been starved for money. 

It would take me some time to relocate numbers on this (and I don't have that time just now), but from memory public university spending per pupil has been constant to down in inflation adjusted dollars over something like 40-50 years. This was pre-covid.

Nominal tuition has jumped significantly, with the two most significant factors being making up for a large decrease in state support and public universities taking on more of a private university approach to tuition with high nominal sticker price but substantial aid for many.

There are some complicated arguments about whether this is a particularly good measure of university spending in addition to much concern over exactly how spending has shifted within universities over this time.

I doubt seriously that athletic programs have siphoned off money especially if you consider the donor support it generates.

Donor support is included in the USA Today numbers.

The big, high profile programs tend to at least break even, but that is a small number of places. Whether $1 - 50 million is a large amount of money depends upon what you want to compare it to.

The big fiction out there is that the pressure to have big fancy intercollegiate athletic programs is to make money for the university. In fact, the pressure is alumni and politicians clamoring for successful teams to cheer for.

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And with that I fear I have ventured too close to politics.

[CTcard]

Also, easy to identify the universities that are basketball schools (including, unfortunately, UConn).

Wondering if the UConn unfortunate comment is just a rivalry issue or something more?

There are a few that look like anomalies to me, and I suspect no longer true. Wisconsin, Michigan, and Florida are all listed as having basketball coaches as the highest paid employee - pretty football-centric places. Even California surprises me, though somewhere back in my memory I remember reading some article stating as much.

Judging from tuition increases and college and university spending increases, higher education has not been starved for money. 

It would take me some time to relocate numbers on this (and I don't have that time just now), but from memory public university spending per pupil has been constant to down in inflation adjusted dollars over something like 40-50 years. This was pre-covid.

Nominal tuition has jumped significantly, with the two most significant factors being making up for a large decrease in state support and public universities taking on more of a private university approach to tuition with high nominal sticker price but substantial aid for many.

There are some complicated arguments about whether this is a particularly good measure of university spending in addition to much concern over exactly how spending has shifted within universities over this time.

I doubt seriously that athletic programs have siphoned off money especially if you consider the donor support it generates.

Donor support is included in the USA Today numbers.

The big, high profile programs tend to at least break even, but that is a small number of places. Whether $1 - 50 million is a large amount of money depends upon what you want to compare it to.

The big fiction out there is that the pressure to have big fancy intercollegiate athletic programs is to make money for the university. In fact, the pressure is alumni and politicians clamoring for successful teams to cheer for.

---------------


And with that I fear I have ventured too close to politics.