Higher (Priced) Education: Part 2 of 4
Athletics & Lazy Rivers
![Lazy River [1]](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/805d47_3833b0af4d334ce1af73d091c1751eb9~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_960,h_475,al_c,q_85,enc_auto/805d47_3833b0af4d334ce1af73d091c1751eb9~mv2.jpg)
LSU Lazy River [1]
Institutions of higher education have been places for students to develop holistically since their inception. However, beginning in the early twentieth century, we began to see a shift in the perception of what colleges should offer—most notably, intercollegiate athletics. What were at first opportunities for men to showcase their masculinity in a controlled environment quickly became seen as a necessary aspect of the collegiate environment and tied to the success of the institution. Sports generated revenue, increased institution’s recruitment reach, and contributed to student satisfaction toward their collegiate experience. Institutions like Harvard and Yale became common in popular culture because of the success of their football programs.[2] Other institutions saw the need to invest in their athletic programs to improve their visibility to the surrounding communities.[3] These first institutions had no idea just how big of a Pandora’s box they were opening.
![Ohio State Stadium [4]](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/805d47_181e508154bb4091bd0544b47923a752~mv2_d_2339_1404_s_2.jpeg/v1/fill/w_980,h_588,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/805d47_181e508154bb4091bd0544b47923a752~mv2_d_2339_1404_s_2.jpeg)
Ohio State University "Ohio Stadium" [4]
Today, it would be extremely difficult to discuss Ohio State, Alabama, Duke, or North Carolina without first talking about their university athletic programs. We have turned student athletes into superstars and done so by asking non-athletes and citizens to flip the bill. Interestingly, the common narrative around athletics as that they generate revenue, increase enrollment, or increase alumni engagement. While there are a handful of institutions that have cost-neutral or cost-positive programs the overwhelming majority subsidize their athletic programs. An analysis in 2006 showcased that only “Nine percent of Division I athletic programs pay for themselves.”[5] Additionally, there are no athletic programs, outside of Division I FBS, that profit from athletics.[6] While the narrative that college sports generate money is true for Ohio State, the other thirteen public schools in Ohio are forced to subsidize their athletic programs. Dr. Richard Vedder states, “The schools in Ohio that are members of the Mid American Conference, I think every single one, loses at least $20 million in intercollegiate athletics each year.”[7] Assuming that these schools average roughly 20,000 students, that’s a subsidy of $1,000 per student within these schools simply to fund athletics. When speaking to Filipic, he pointed to an issue that arose in the 1990s while he was at the Ohio Board of Regents. He states,
“I remember back in the mid 1990s, we were really concerned about Central State’s financial health. They were down to about 1000 students. They were spending something like $3 million each year on football, something like $3000 per student at the time.”[8]
The institutional mission of Central State was clearly at stake yet they continued to operate their football program. This inconceivable approach to operating a university is not unique to their situation though; it is a consistent theme in higher education today.
Athletic programs strive for national championships and new prestige in a hope that this will increase enrollments and invite alumni to give back to the school. However, they often ignore the “iron law of sports: every game that produces a winner also produces a loser. The nationwide win-loss collegiate record is .500.”[9] Institutions want to produce better sports teams but decide to invest egregious amounts of money into them just to see them perform at a mediocre level. Filipic speculates that, “most campuses were competing at one level too high, in terms of athletic conferences. The desire to be at that next level of competition is very very expensive.”[10] Higher education as a whole has done a poor job reigning in these egregious expenses and has shown a lapse in judgment pertaining to the reason that we have universities in the first place.
While athletics is a major component of the “keeping up with the Jones’s” era of higher education, the expansion of student recreational and activity spaces has been similarly outlandish. Filipic states, “The campuses believe that whatever it is driving enrollment decisions, it is not principally price. People would rather go to an institution that provided a range of amenities even if that cost you more.”[11] With public institutions competing for dwindling resources and an increased focus on enrollment and completion, institutions are doing everything in their power to attract students to their universities. Once one independent recreational facility is built at a comparable institution, the other universities follow in line rather than gambling on a decrease in enrollment.
University of Missouri Rec Center [12]
From 2005 to 2015 Ohio’s colleges saw their debt increase 121%, mostly due to construction of new nonacademic facilities.[13] While the state used to pay for most capital improvements to the university, there has been a clear shift over the last 15-20 years forcing the institutions themselves to borrow money and use tuition dollars to pa off the debt.[14] This dramatic increase has been part of a growing trend to build more impressive student centers, residence halls, and recreational facilities. Once built, universities make stops at their recreation centers and student facilities the major aspect of their campus tours. Institutions have been convinced that enrollment is driven by these aspects of their institution and in order to remain competitive are expanding their facilities with enormous costs to future students. Athletics and student spaces are an increasingly important trend toward increasing costs in higher education, but the next two factors have had even more drastic results.
Next Blog: Higher (Priced) Education: Why Have Higher Education Costs Risen so quickly? Part 3
Sources:
[1] https://www.economix101.com/home/lsu-chooses-amenities-over-education
[2] Toma, J. Douglas. 2003. Football U.: spectator sports in the life of the American university. (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2003), 27.
[3] Lewis, William Henry. A primer of college football. (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1896), 181.
[4] http://buckeyeempire.com/blog/2012/08/14/football-season-preview-the-shoe/
[5] Hulsey, Timothy L. "The Cost of, and to, Public Higher Education." (Phi Kappa Phi Forum 90, no. 1, 2010): 24.
[6] Vedder, Richard K. Gillen, Andrew. Bennett, Daniel. “25 ways to reduce the cost of college.” (Washington, D.C., Center for College Affordability and Productivity, 2010), 66.
[7] Vedder, Richard. Interview with Lukas Wenrick. Personal Interview. Dayton, February 17, 2017.
[8] Filipic. Personal Interview.
[9] Vedder, Thirty-Six Steps. 39.
[10] Filipic. Personal Interview.
[11] Ibid.
[12] http://www.sports-management-degrees.com/lists/top-5-jaw-dropping-university-pool-complexes/
[13] McNay, and Kilpatrick. 2017 Ohio Higher Education Report, 12.
[14] Filipic. Personal Interview.
About the Author
Lukas Wenrick spends his days working to develop innovative solutions to the most complex issues universities face. He does so to ensure that the most marginalized students may pursue an alternative trajectory than the one laid out by their zip code. He believes that universities and other educational enterprises have the duty to expand educational opportunity to as many individuals as possible and that excellence should be judged by the students that an institution includes, rather than those that it excludes.
Lukas holds a Master's of Education in Higher Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a Bachelor of Arts in Social Science Education from Wright State University. His experiences at both an open access public university and an elite private institution inform the work he does every day. Currently, Lukas serves as a University Innovation Fellow at Arizona State University where he works to leverage the ASU enterprise to resolve educational and social inequities in the world.
If you'd like to know more about Lukas you can find him on the following sites:
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