Money-Sucking College Sports Programs

Per last week's ongoing discussion of higher education, one thing nobody seems to dispute is the assertion by "Professor X" that classes like his are "a substantial profit center" for most colleges. The math isn't hard; adjunct professors typically only get paid a few thousand dollars to teach a course that each student pays a few thousand dollars to take. Even taking into account the pro-rate costs of facilities and administrative overhead blah blah blah, the colleges are making a lot of money here. Which begs the question: what are they spending those profits on?

Among other things: phenomenally expensive, money-losing sports programs. That's the conclusion of a new report from the NCAA (InsideHigherEd summary here). It found that median spending on sports among the 119 NCAA Division I football-inclusive sports programs grew by 15 percent in 2006, to $35.8 million. Revenues to support those programs, meanwhile, grew by only 9 percent, to $26.4 million. In other words, the typical D-I university loses millions of dollars per year on sports, and the deficit is getting bigger by the year.

And that's just the median. A handful of schools--19, to be exact--made money, while bunches of them lost $10 million or even $20 million or more. Where does your alma mater stack up in all of this? There's no way to know--the NCAA won't release the numbers for individual colleges.

In its defense, the NCAA has put out a lot more information here than it ever has before, and is quite candid about the the fact that most of its members are essentially siphoning off huge amounts of money that could be used for education, research, need-based financial aid, etc., in order to subsidize sports. To be clear, not all of that money goes to support quasi-professional men's football and basketball teams; these numbers include all sports, men's and women's.

As with all spending decisions, this comes down to priorities: given the choice, most Division I colleges and universities would rather spend money on an activity whose benefits accrue substantially in the form of entertainment for non-students and the greater glory of the university, at the expense of the more mundane task of helping academically vulnerable students stay in college and earn a degree.