Instructional Salavies v. Coaching Salaries

[MarkL]

The athletic department has no desire to completely obliterate any academic program and airily dismiss its entire value simply to serve its own needs. The converse cannot be said.

Also, while they'll never get their wish, if they did indeed decimate the athletic department they'd go after other parts of the university the microsecond their interests were at stake and the talking points would be the same.

Overdramatic any?

[kdog27]

I didn't attack you but you still ignored my question.

[professorjackson]

Clearly most of the universities who are well known for academics and not athletics don't match BGSU's profile. But there are plenty of great schools that don't focus on athletics. Just because everyone else does it doesn't mean it makes sense. Lots of schools throw money away on lots of misguided things. Oh, and how did I change your words? I'm pretty sure I just quoted them. And I take them to mean that without athletics you don't think BGSU would be much different from a community college. Not many community colleges I know of have nationally ranked programs in demography, industrial/organizational psychology and chemistry, to name just a few of the outstanding academic programs for which BGSU is known.

[kdog27]

Clearly most of the universities who are well known for academics and not athletics don't match BGSU's profile. But there are plenty of great schools that don't focus on athletics. Just because everyone else does it doesn't mean it makes sense. Lots of schools throw money away on lots of misguided things. Oh, and how did I change your words? I'm pretty sure I just quoted them. And I take them to mean that without athletics you don't think BGSU would be much different from a community college. Not many community colleges I know of have nationally ranked programs in demography, industrial/organizational psychology and chemistry, to name just a few of the outstanding academic programs for which BGSU is known.

I'm saying you changed my words because I was talking about getting rid of athletics entirely but your response to that you acted like I said "focus" on athletics. I get where you are coming from but I don't see BG ever being a successful university with a nonexistent or practically nonexistent athletic department. My honest impression is the school is no better than a community college at that point.

[professorjackson]

So you don't think the academic side of the university is strong? Seriously, not trying to pick a fight. Or do you mean the academic profile of the university would decline if we didn't have intercollegiate athletics? I haven't heard that argument before. What program did you graduate from? Was it good? And I don't support eliminating intercollegiate athletics. I just think they should be self-sustaining. Or at the very least, they should be subject to the same budget controls the rest of the university faces.

[Globetrotter]

What does Vanderbilt do? Don't they not have an athletic department?

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/edu ... tics_N.htm

[Lord_Byron]

I graduated from BG 34 years ago. During the time I was in school, the years preceding that time, and the decades since, the athletic department has never been self sustaining. That is, the department's generated revenue has never exceeded its expenses.

Also, during that time period, there really has never been any serious talk of the university dropping athletics as a whole. There have been many sports dropped since I was there -- lacrosse, men's track, wrestling, field hockey, etc. But, consistently the school has maintained the mission to provide a full education consisting of academics, sports, and culture. The only one of those three that requires student participation is academics. Sports and culture are provided for participants and for spectators who want to enrich their lives and become more well rounded adults.

Professor J, I need to ask, when you and other faculty members accepted a position at the university, did you not know that the athletic department has never been self sustaining? If not, I can only conclude that you didn't care or that it wasn't important to you. If it was important to you, why did you take the job? Why not find a university with self-sustaining athletics where you wouldn't be caught in this quandary?

[factman]

Is the political science department self sustaining?

[professorjackson]

Of course I knew the university wasted millions on intercollegiate athletics when I took the job. What does that have to do with anything? You don't leave a place just because they have some boneheaded policies. You try to fix them. To ask if the political science department is self-sustaining in response to a preference that athletics be self-sustaining is absurd (even though the colleges are forced to break even). Teaching and research are essential. Extracurricular activities are just that, nice extras. The university just reduced the number of faculty by 73, crying budget problems. Yet we continue to lose millions on intercollegiate athletics. No wonder no one believe what administrators say.

[professorjackson]

For BGSU's fiscal year ended June 30, 2012, on top of the $11,819,248 in student activity fees, intercollegiate athletics received an additional $425,104 in direct institutional support, and still managed to overspend revenues by $457,936. More than 10 terminated non tenure track faculty could have been retained for just the direct institutional support. Priorities...

Data from BGSU's audited financial report posted on the Ohio Auditor's website. http://www.auditor.state.oh.us/auditsea ... 2-Wood.pdf

[hammb]

Again, you fail to see/care/admit that the value of athletics will NEVER show up in the athletics balance sheet. There is a reason that over 100 Division 1 universities field athletics programs that require money from the general fees to sustain themselves. The people that run these universities and are paid to make these decisions know that the money that funds athletics does far more than you care to admit.

Athletics builds a culture and connects alumni to the university. You are absolutely foolish if you think cutting athletics would not absolutely cripple the amount of alumni donations the school sees. I can guarantee you I'd never give a penny back. Athletics are the one thing that keep me connected to BGSU, and I still freaking LIVE in BG. I guarantee you there are countless others that are the same way.

Merchandise sales, alumni donations, and the money that goes to local businesses that then filters back to the university and their faculty/staff. There is so much money that is indirectly tied to athletics that you continue not being willing to admit. Unfortunately it is also nearly impossible to quantify.

In this case there are people far smarter than you or I, and far more knowledgeable about the subject making the decisions. And almost unanimously schools that have athletics continue to field them. Schools that don't have athletics continue to add them. So do you really believe YOU are the lone voice of reason and that the leadership of all of these schools are making the wrong decisions!? Do you believe that they just like watching football games and chuckle behind their backs about how much it pisses you guys off if they keep shelling out the cash?

To claim athletics should be self sustaining is just short sighted. If anything BG should commit a few more dollars to athletics and actually attempt to WIN more frequently. That would be a far better decision than cutting them, IMO. A winning basketball or football team will do far more for BGSU than any educator ever will.

[mscarn]

Professor, please respond to the following questions if you could:

1a) Is there anything that competitive Division I intercollegiate athletics brings to the students participating or the campus at large?
1b) Is there anything they bring that cannot be quantified?
Ic) Qualification and participation in the 2012 Military Bowl exposed the university to 1.9 million people but is not found in the balance sheet. Would the cost of a comparable advertizing campaign exceed the 450K of direct institutional support?

2) Is there ever any reason for eliminating a non-tenure track faculty position?

3) The mission statement of the university clearly articulates ambitions that are achieved beyond the boundaries of classroom instruction and research. How can you reconcile this with your stated position that classroom instruction and research are the sole purposes of the institution?

4) You concede that the political science department is not self-sustaining as you desire the athletic department to be and justify it by citing its relation to the central mission of the university. Using a little reducto ad absurdum, would you support pulling funding from all non-essential, "nice extras" that also exist on campus yet fall outside your stated criteria of "central" and divert the money into professor salaries to more fully align to the central mission?

Ex: On-campus dorms (students can commute), dining halls (students can bring food or patronize outside private establishments), shuttle service (students can walk to class)...

[Globetrotter]

http://www.nacubo.org/Business_Officer_ ... _Have.html

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/pi ... cost/7827/

http://collegenews.org/_wp/wp-content/u ... esults.pdf

[Roll Along!]

How much of that 11.8 million athletics is given for student fees goes right back to the University to pay for scholarships?

[professorjackson]

Intercollegiate athletics brings much to campus. It teaches the vast majority of students to be spectators, not participants. It's also training in irrational jingoism. I'm not sure if I really believe those statements, but if it allegedly brings all these great unquantifiable things cited by posters above, it's equally possible it also brings a lot of bad, unquantifiable things too.

I never claimed that classroom instruction and research are the sole mission of the university. I said education and research are the central purpose of the university. Of course I believe important educational things happen outside the classroom. I just finished a meeting with an undergraduate student about a conference paper we are working on together.

I never conceded that the political science department is not self-sustaining. I'm willing to bet it is, but I don't have the data in front of me. The university's colleges are. They are forced to be.

A ton of the student activity fee goes to pay for scholarships. 20,000 students are forced to pay a fee to fund scholarships for 500 students to play sports the 20,000 students could care less about, especially if Michigan or OSU happens to be playing on the same day. Hardly seems fair.

I've never found persuasive the argument based on how much it would cost to buy the TV exposure of something like the Military Bowl. I have no idea how much buying TV time on whatever ESPN network the game was on costs in the middle of the afternoon on December 27th. I would hope we wouldn't buy such time, so the comparison makes no sense.

BGSU has chosen to eliminate 73 faculty members, thereby increasing class sizes and reducing options for students, just when the state is going to be basing our SSI on course completions and graduations. This is a terrible decision, but hey, athletics and all the unquantifiable benefits is more important than silly education...Priorities...