Rutgers Grows Athletics, Trims Academics

[xchrom]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-16/rutgers-boosting-athletics-at-expense-of-academics-fails-to-emulate-texas.html

Rutgers University forgave $100,000 of the football coach’s interest-free home loan last year. The women’s basketball coach got monthly golf and car allowances. Both collected bonuses without winning a championship.

Meanwhile, the history department took away professors’ desk phones to save money and shrank its doctoral program by 25 percent. After funding cuts by the deficit-strapped Legislature, New Jersey’s state university froze professors’ salaries, cut the use of photocopies for exams and jacked up student tuition, housing and other fees.

Rutgers also increased funding for sports. The 245-year-old school spent more money on athletics than any other public institution in the six biggest football conferences during the 2009-2010 fiscal year, based on data compiled by Bloomberg. More than 40 percent of sports revenue came from student fees and the university’s general fund.

“I am dumbfounded,” said New Jersey Assemblyman David Wolfe, a Republican who is a professor of psychology at Ocean County College in Toms River. “Rutgers officials appear before the Legislature every year and claim they are underfunded and need more money. Now we find out we have the No. 1-subsidized athletics program in the country.”

[MedicalAdmin]

1. This is hardly surprising. Hand me that can of brawndo, would you? n/t

[awoke_in_2003]

8. it's got electrolytes and stuff. nt

[no_hypocrisy]

2. I'll bet Douglas College regrets merging with Rutgers now.

[LiberalEsto]

5. Douglass fought the merger

It wasn't voluntary. Rutgers wanted to assimilate Douglass, Cook and Livingston colleges in order to merge the faculties and theoretically save money (ha!). I'm a Livingston alumna and it looks to me like the university has wiped out any memory of Livingston's existence.

The dimwits who run Rutgers have been throwing too much money into athletics for far too long. The only other thing the board of governors cares about is attracting big name faculty and huge research grants. And these faculty superstars hardly ever teach, either.

The education of undergraduates - particularly in liberal arts - stopped being a priority at Rutgers when Mason Gross departed in the 1970s.

[RZM]

3. Nothing new there

Even schools with weak athletics are taking sports off the chopping block and leaving academics in their place. I can maybe understand a little at schools where athletics are a draw and actually make the school some money. But there are plenty of other schools where athletics take without giving anything back.

[Name removed]

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[Cool Logic]

4. "40 percent of sports revenue came from student fees and the university?s general fund."

However, at many universities, men's football and basketball programs are self-sustaining. In many cases, these programs actually fund a university's enitre athelectic department.

And in the case of some of the more sucessful programs, e.g., U. Texas Football, sports programs provide funding for a university's academic programs.

[Blue_Tires]

9. big-time athletic programs don't give as much as you think

usually the money they make is theirs, that's why most athletics departments incorporate into an entity seperate from the university...

yeah, the AD tosses back some crumbs to the general fund, but it's small change

[Dawson Leery]

6. Sports programs are NOT a priority in an educational instittuion.

If the sports program cannot sustain itself, the program should be suspended.
The student activities fund paid "Snooki" :puke: $32,000 to give out fashion tips :rofl:.
Clearly, there is a problem with this university.

[DirkGently]

7. College sports should be a source of funding for the academics, not vice versa.