University Diaries » “How dare we give all this money to intercollegiate athletics and do this to the general student body,” she said. “It has got to stop. Berkeley has to take the lead in this.”

A Berkeley professor speaks up at an open meeting about funding.

A math professor at the same meeting does the numbers:

Professors and community members debated the role of athletics on campus after Calvin Moore, chair of the task force and professor emeritus of mathematics, presented preliminary suggestions for how the department can remedy its financial instability.

Though department officials said last semester that the cost to campus – which totaled about $13.7 million last year – would be significantly lower this year, Moore said the cost will be the same if not more.

Part of the campus support the department received last fiscal year came in the form of a $5.8 million loan from funds at the discretion of Nathan Brostrom, former vice chancellor of administration.

Though Brostrom and Laura Hazlett, associate director for the athletic department’s business office, have said the loan will eventually be paid back, Moore said he doubted any money would ever come back from intercollegiate athletics.

“This is sunken money from the campus, and it’s not going to come back in our lifetime,” he said.

Sunken money’s a nice phrase.

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Notes of a Neophyte

DM Says:
April 29th, 2010 at 6:26AM

I still do not understand what an American university gains from funding intercollegiate sport. Can someone enlighten me?

adam Says:
April 29th, 2010 at 9:22AM

DM: The conventional wisdom seems to be that high profile intercollegiate sports teams rally the alumni, who are, in turn, the font of bequests to the institution. I am not aware of a good analysis of this proposition, however.

GTWMA Says:
April 29th, 2010 at 10:07AM

There are a number of empirical studies on the impact not just on giving, but on applications (both number and quality). There’s an article in the Journal of Economic Perspectives that summarizes that. Google scholar turns up plenty of decent analysis. I’d say that the balance of the evidence is for a small positive effect of marginal statistical significance in all these areas.

Mr Punch Says:
April 29th, 2010 at 3:01PM

This just in (via CHE):

“Winning athletic teams were also found by the study to inspire alumni generosity. The study found that those [public] flagship institutions with the highest alumni-giving participation in 2004 were the same institutions with football teams that finished in the top 25 in the Associated Press rankings most frequently from 1994 to 2004.”

Margaret Soltan Says:
April 29th, 2010 at 3:56PM

Yes, Mr Punch.

Couple of problems. I haven’t read the CHE piece yet – how much of this money is for academics?

Other thing. Gotta make sure the football team keeps winning. But how do you do that?

Well… You’re going to need to get the best coach and staff to make sure you keep winning. Players too. You’ll need the absolutely best players, and that will probably mean easing up big time on the whole student thing.

The salary for the coach and staff is going to be way up there in the millions… So – how much are you clearing?

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