According to a report released by the NCAA on November 18, 79 percent of college athletes who entered college between 1999 and 2002 received their degrees within six years, up one percentage point from last year. However, the three sports which graduated the fewest players in previous years — football, men’s baseball, and men’s basketball…
Op-ed published in USA Today, November 13, 2009. William E. Kirwan, chancellor, University System of Maryland R. Gerald Turner, president, Southern Methodist University As co-chairmen of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, we are concerned that cost escalation in athletics is diminishing support for academics at many universities. In the 2007-08 school year, nearly 80%…
The University of New Orleans (UNO) has announced it is considering dropping from NCAA Division I to Division III due to financial constraints. The UNO athletic department received significant budget cuts in the current fiscal year, and a student referendum to increase student fees to support the athletic department failed in spring 2009. According to…
USA Today recently published several articles relating to rising cost of college football coaching salaries. Their investigation of 2009 salaries found an annual compensation of greater than $2 million for more than 25 head coaches in the NCAA’s highest competitive level, the Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS); at least 56 coaches were earning greater…
Richard Karcher, professor at the Florida Coastal School of Law, has published an article, “The Coaching Carousel in Big-Time Intercollegiate Athletics: Economic Implications and Legal Considerations,” in the Fordham Intellectual Property, Media & Entertainment Law Journal, Vol. 20, No. 1. According to the article abstract, “this paper takes an extensive look at the economics of…
John Thelin published an op-ed in the Lexington Herald Leader on November 8, 2009, relating to the financial issues facing intercollegiate athletics. Thelin is a University of Kentucky professor in the Educational Policy Studies Department. His opinion is below: “National Collegiate Athletics Association’s big sports are in big trouble. That’s the sobering news from the…
Knight Commission co-chair William “Brit” Kirwan, Chancellor of the University System of Maryland, was interviewed by FoxBusiness.com in relation to the unsustainable cost of college sports. Link here to watch the interview.
In an article published by USA Today, the paper reported about the tension between academic and athletics as a result of significant state funding cuts to the University of California (UC) system. The UC system is facing $813 million in cuts, including $150 million at the UC-Berkley campus, while at the same time more than…
“There is no correlation between spending more on athletics and winning more . . . [and] increased spending on coaches’ salaries has no significant relationship to success or increased revenue.” Athletics events, where students, faculty, administrators and alumni gather, are the “front porch” for a university. Winning teams don’t engender lasting increases in applications or…
On October 2, 2009, the NCAA reported that spending on academic support for student-athletes remained steady or increased at nearly 92 percent of Division I institutions since 2007, despite the national economic downturn. The study found that most schools experienced between a 1 to 20 percent increase in total spending on academic programs over the…