Stop the $10 million higher ed subsidy to athletics

The Oregonian article “New NCAA definitions of revenues cause a stir” by Rachel Bachman (10/26/09, no online link) reports on the athletic departments of the U of O and OSU:

By Oregon’s and Oregon State’s accounts, both produced modest surpluses that year. But under the NCAA’s new formula, Oregon’s gap between self-generated revenues and expenses was $2,219,094 and Oregon State’s was $3,762,471.

So athletics at both the U of O and OSU received subsidies. Bachman further reports:

The NCAA excludes money from a universities general fund. Oregon State athletics received about $2.1 million from the university in 2007-08. Oregon athletics received no general-fund money.

Here’s where the controversy comes in: The NCAA also excludes from athletics’ generated revenues such sources as state-lottery proceeds and student fees, which made up $2.1 million and $2.4 million of athletic department income, respectfully, at Oregon and Oregon State.

Bachman’s article further reports that:

Since students at Oregon receive blocks of tickets to football and men’s basketball games in exchange for fees, their $1.4 million from 2007-08 should be counted as ticket revenue, not as subsidy, Bellotti said. Oregon State has a similar fees-for-tickets arrangement.

State lottery funds are clearly a state subsidy, and an inappropriate one, IMHO. Forcing students to pay for tickets is also a subsidy. Let the students decide if they want to buy tickets, then they would be actual ticket sales.

Bachman also reports on the figures for Portland State University:

After student fees and state university support was substracted, PSU had negative net revenue of about $5 million.

That makes a total athletic subsidy at the three universities of $10.98 million. Now my priority for reallocating those funds would be as I advocated in my 2006 Oregon Comprehensive Mandarin Development Program (here):

$6,000,000: Higher Education: Funding to State Board of Higher Education for student study in China, development of business internships in China, additional Mandarin courses and administrative overhead. Board of Higher Education can allocate, but must fund at least 1,000 students (can include community college students) who, each having taken one year of college level Mandarin, spend at least four weeks in China and administrative costs cannot exceed 10% ($600,000). Suggest Board of Higher Education use take Mandarin for an academic year and we will send you to China  for four weeks approach. Corporate and foundation funding is preferred, but State of Oregon funding should provide what they do not.

Another priority might be faculty salaries. From the Oregonian article “UO faculty consider forming a union” by the Associated Press (here)

Oregon faculty are generally ranked at or near the bottom in pay among institutions in the groups the state uses as comparators.

Oregon ranks last in average salary and in average total compensation — pay plus benefits — on a list of nine large public universities the state uses for comparing budgets. The average faculty salary is 80 percent of the average for the other eight universities, and total compensation is 84 percent of the average.
   
Finally, Oregon ranks last in pay among the 60 members of the Association of American Universities, an invitation-only group made up of many of the top public and private universities around the nation. In that comparison, Oregon’s average faculty salary of $73,300 is 11.5 percent below that of the second-to-last school, the University of Missouri, which has an average faculty salary of $82,600.

A public university system that gives priority to athletics over both the need to build strategic bridges to a rising China and the need for higher faculty salaries has its priorities wrong, terribly wrong. 

Please tell me the Governor and legislature didn't approve these subsidies.