01-10-2024, 02:22 PM
Thanks OCcard & others for further insight.
Some further musings with a disclaimer that it's from someone not in the loop, but rather making conjectures based on limited info.
If you look at the report in simplest terms, OMG the athletics is hemorrhaging $21 mil cash!
Like as in $21 mil actual dollars flowing out of the University through the Athletic department doorways.
But I'm not sure it's that simple.
If Athletics is paying $31 mil of scholarships, then sounds to me like Academics is charging Athletics that amount for the privilege of teaching (and housing and feeding) these Stanford athletes.
So that $31 mil is presumably not directly going out of Stanford directly, but rather to Academics, which then pools it into all its other students income and then sends it out to teachers, workers, etc.
So the $31 mil transfer makes Athletics looks worse financially and Academics better.
I then think about those Stanford athletes on scholarship, and how many, without the scholarship, would have come to Stanford in the first place, and if so, what tuition would they have paid to Academics (i.e. would some have gotten any need based or academic scholarship?)
For those athletes that didn't come, then would they be directly substituted with the same number of non-athlete admissions?
Would those non-athlete admissions all be paying full tuition themselves, or some or many of them be getting partial or full need or academic scholarships?
And furthermore, in worst case, if all those athletes did not get scholarships, and presumably many or most ended up going elsewhere, then what is the prospect of Stanford athletics long term?
If Stanford athletics long term isn't good, what is the prospect of the Stanford "brand" long term, if not evolution from what it has been, top quality Academic + Athletic, to maybe simply top quality Academic?
Getting back to my initial point, I think the Athletics report of $21 mil deficit is of course not good, but it doesn't exactly correlate to the Athletic dept having blown away $21 mil of cash. A lot depends on how you view the implications and accuracy of the $31 mil charge to Athletics that I presume is credited to Academics.
Some further musings with a disclaimer that it's from someone not in the loop, but rather making conjectures based on limited info.
If you look at the report in simplest terms, OMG the athletics is hemorrhaging $21 mil cash!
Like as in $21 mil actual dollars flowing out of the University through the Athletic department doorways.
But I'm not sure it's that simple.
If Athletics is paying $31 mil of scholarships, then sounds to me like Academics is charging Athletics that amount for the privilege of teaching (and housing and feeding) these Stanford athletes.
So that $31 mil is presumably not directly going out of Stanford directly, but rather to Academics, which then pools it into all its other students income and then sends it out to teachers, workers, etc.
So the $31 mil transfer makes Athletics looks worse financially and Academics better.
I then think about those Stanford athletes on scholarship, and how many, without the scholarship, would have come to Stanford in the first place, and if so, what tuition would they have paid to Academics (i.e. would some have gotten any need based or academic scholarship?)
For those athletes that didn't come, then would they be directly substituted with the same number of non-athlete admissions?
Would those non-athlete admissions all be paying full tuition themselves, or some or many of them be getting partial or full need or academic scholarships?
And furthermore, in worst case, if all those athletes did not get scholarships, and presumably many or most ended up going elsewhere, then what is the prospect of Stanford athletics long term?
If Stanford athletics long term isn't good, what is the prospect of the Stanford "brand" long term, if not evolution from what it has been, top quality Academic + Athletic, to maybe simply top quality Academic?
Getting back to my initial point, I think the Athletics report of $21 mil deficit is of course not good, but it doesn't exactly correlate to the Athletic dept having blown away $21 mil of cash. A lot depends on how you view the implications and accuracy of the $31 mil charge to Athletics that I presume is credited to Academics.