… 43%.
But WSU knows where to invest its resources: A stupendous salary for the basketball coach.
A letter writer to the Dayton Daily News ridicules the gotta pay market prices explanation coming from Wright State:
[C]ollege sport is not a market… If it were truly a market endeavor, there would have been no, or very limited, public monies or tax exemptions involved to set up and support the enterprise…
With college sports, there is a captive audience, subsidies through student fees and university overhead and questionable tax deductions and tax advantages through their association with a nonprofit education institution.
There is also the general issue the IRS is apparently addressing in an ongoing audit of college and universities for reporting (or not) related business income, including stadium advertising income for sports and athletics, and the tax deductions received by donors to college athletics.
She concludes by calling sports at universities like Wright State an “ongoing corruption of the college mission by incompetent administrators and compliant businesses and politicians.”
February 9th, 2011 at 3:18PM
Well-meaning but, of course, wrong. Hiring college chaplains may or may not be a market; but basketball coaches (like research-oriented faculty) are in a marketplace. The coaching market breaks down, however, when schools pay more than they have to in order to show their commitment to the sport or their faith in the coach (and yes this does occur, most often when as assistant is promoted to the top job).