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BABYBABY where did our …

fees go?

UD‘s friend David Ridpath, along with Matthew Denhart, asks Ohio University students how much they pay in mandatory student fees; he asks them if they know how much of that money goes to athletics; and he asks them how many campus sports events they attend.

They know the answer to the third question — they attend very few, if any — but they’re wobbly on the others.

“On average, how many Ohio University intercollegiate athletic events do you attend per year?” In exchange for receiving student fee money, Ohio’s athletics department allows students to attend home games for free. The average response was 5.8 events attended per year; the median was two, and 35% of respondents reported they attend none. USA TODAY, in a figure cited in the survey’s case study, reported in September that Ohio is allocating $765 of each full-time student’s general fees for the 2010-11 school year to athletics… The survey also asked respondents to rate “how important a factor was Ohio University’s intercollegiate athletics reputation in influencing your decision to enroll at this institution.” More than 78% of the respondents said it was either “unimportant” (24.8%) or “extremely unimportant” (53.7%).

A study much like this one took place at the University of Toledo and had similar results.

Conclusion: Keep ’em ignorant. As long as they don’t know how much they pay in fees, where the fees go, that the fees primarily support athletic events they don’t attend, and that most of the things universities say by way of defending high sports fees are bullshit, all will be well.

Margaret Soltan, February 3, 2011 8:15AM
Posted in: sport

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7 Responses to “BABYBABY where did our …”

  1. superdestroyer Says:

    The problem with all of the universities in Ohio that are not Ohio State is that their students grew up being Buckeye fans. Students at the other universities did not really decide to attend Ohio, Akron, Toledo, Kent, but settled on those universities after not being admitted to Ohio State.

    All of the other universities in Ohio would be better off being rid of their athletic teams and just have Ohio State University parties when Ohio State is in the final four or the Rose Bowl.

  2. Stephen Karlson Says:

    I believe Super Destroyer offered that observation about the entire Mid-American, with the “not being admitted” argument applicable as well in Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan. The Mid-American thus hangs around at the fringe of Division I, selling road wins to the Big Ten to raise average attendance and offering tailgating opportunities for home games. Academically, the point of the regional comprehensives once upon a time was to ensure sufficient capacity to offer any state resident finishing in the top third, or the top half, of high school graduating classes, a shot at a higher degree. There’s some academic hanging around as well …

  3. John Murray Says:

    This research indicates that athletics is a big financial drain at schools like those in the MAC. I wish we (Toledo) could give a medal to Katharine Ott, the Toledo student whose work on the athletic parasite burden carried by general fees preceded that of Ridpath and Denhart by a few months.

    When I raised this issue with an economics colleague, a big sports fan, his response was that athletics brought in a lot of donations. And as if to prove his point, our neighbor Bowling Green recently received a gift of $10M–all for basketball! [http://bgnews.com/campus/10-million-gift-to-help-basketball-team-1/]

  4. Stephen Karlson Says:

    Sometimes the sports bring in the donations — see, for instance, the Yordon Center at Northern Illinois — but sports success doesn’t necessarily bring students — the marketing people at Northern are working to stem losses to Illinois State, about 100 miles away, without a recent bowl victory, but on a train line. I believe there is some economics research on sports-based donations, and there might be some evidence of crowding out.

  5. theprofessor Says:

    On the bright side, I have it on reliable authority that an attempt by a group of trustees to insert Division I athletics into the first sentence of our mission statement has been beaten back.

    We have to look for small victories, right?

  6. superdestroyer Says:

    Stephen

    I realized college athletics should be limited to a few schools that have large number of hangers-on when I sat next to an engineer who said he as a huge fan of the Tennessee Volunteers but learned later that he had attended Tennessee-Chattanooga. He could not have cared less about athletics at UT-Chattanooga. Why shouldn’t schools like East Tennessee, Middle Tennessee, and UT-Chattanooga just support the flag ship university and give up having their own teams.

    The same could be said for Georgia Southern, Troy, UNC-Charlotte, Virginia Commonwealth.

  7. Stephen Karlson Says:

    Or consider shifting to one of the other divisions in football and basketball. Illinois State, Southern, and Western all play in the Missouri Valley, which has slots in the main basketball tournament, but which participates in a football championship more organized and less tainted than the bowl championship series. The former Wisconsin teachers’ colleges used to have something called the Wisconsin State University Conference, which participates in a different football championship that’s settled around Thanksgiving. You keep some of that collegiate atmosphere and provide an opportunity for future band directors to learn something about marching band — an alleged economy of scope in the teacher preparation area — without as much corrupting influence as is present in the so-called power conferences that allegedly (count the Mid American Conference representation in the Super Bowl) serve as development leagues for the pros to the exclusion of education.

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