[BostonCard]

Also, if coaches' salaries are included, the average employee compensation is skewed up by some high outliers. Median compensation would be of more interest.

The quote in the piece is "The average salary of an athletic department administrative employee is $209,000."

As written, it suggests salary, and not total compensation, and "administrative employee" suggests it excludes coaching salaries.  However, the number is given without reference or context, and as I have noted, Stanford does not publish employee salaries.  If I had to guess, they probably found a line item in the AD budget for "employee compensation" and divided it by the number of employees in the org chart, and called it the average salary.  There are a lot of problems with this method, and to be honest, the number they got doesn't pass the smell test (or maybe the Stanford AD really is spending on salaries like a drunken sailor and we have a real problem).

There are a lot of things to disagree with the AD about, and people can be genuinely mad about the decision to cut sports.  But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and all we have here is a bullet point in a piece that has an agenda.

BC

[BostonCard]

Also, if coaches' salaries are included, the average employee compensation is skewed up by some high outliers. Median compensation would be of more interest.

The quote in the piece is "The average salary of an athletic department administrative employee is $209,000."

As written, it suggests salary, and not total compensation, and "administrative employee" suggests it excludes coaching salaries.  However, the number is given without reference or context, and as I have noted, Stanford does not publish employee salaries.  If I had to guess, they probably found a line item in the AD budget for "employee compensation" and divided it by the number of employees in the org chart, and called it the average salary.  There are a lot of problems with this method, and to be honest, the number they got doesn't pass the smell test (or maybe the Stanford AD really is spending on salaries like a drunken sailor and we have a real problem).

There are a lot of things to disagree with the AD about, and people can be genuinely mad about the decision to cut sports.  But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and all we have here is a bullet point in a piece that has an agenda.

BC