Thursday, April 7, 2016

Which NCAA D1 Schools Have the Highest Reported Subsidies?

Almost all athletic departments of NCAA D1 schools receive reported subsidies from the university outside athletics. I say "reported" because the budget of NCAA schools sometimes is questioned or debated. Based on official reports (courtesy of The Chronicle of Higher Education) here are the top 25 schools (of 201 in the database of public schools) in terms of the subsidy that they receive from the broader university, where "subsidy" is defined as the sum of student fees and institutional transfers. The ranking is by proportion of the subsidy in the athletics department revenues.
institution subsidy as % of athletics spending external revenue subsidy
1 New Jersey Institute of Technology 90.6% $1,237,517 $11,899,220
2 University of California-Riverside 89.0% $1,696,085 $13,788,851
3 Central Connecticut State University 88.0% $1,771,635 $12,959,383
4 Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis 87.8% $994,818 $7,184,587
5 Morehead State University 86.2% $1,491,916 $9,341,671
6 The University of Texas at Arlington 86.2% $1,628,784 $10,152,846
7 Longwood University 86.1% $1,358,361 $8,416,143
8 Winthrop University 85.9% $1,773,621 $10,775,669
9 Utah Valley University 85.8% $1,590,150 $9,601,419
10 Radford University 85.8% $1,863,266 $11,237,598
11 Stephen F Austin State University 85.1% $2,332,368 $13,364,737
12 Kennesaw State University 85.1% $2,608,908 $14,907,125
13 University of Maryland Eastern Shore 84.8% $846,088 $4,708,513
14 Stony Brook University 84.7% $4,206,726 $23,298,044
15 Northern Kentucky University 84.6% $1,837,533 $10,113,985
16 Cleveland State University 84.1% $1,818,928 $9,627,983
17 Alcorn State University 84.1% $1,010,423 $5,329,700
18 University of Missouri-Kansas City 83.6% $1,875,601 $9,592,075
19 Morgan State University 83.6% $1,522,142 $7,753,009
20 Eastern Michigan University 83.4% $4,997,815 $25,083,708
21 East Tennessee State University 82.3% $3,017,680 $14,071,113
22 George Mason University 81.9% $3,807,345 $17,207,352
23 University of South Carolina-Upstate 81.7% $1,304,471 $5,834,118
24 James Madison University 81.6% $8,042,437 $35,725,049
25 Texas A & M University-Corpus Christi 81.6% $1,940,154 $8,600,266
You'll note that all of of these schools are small, and are not what people traditionally think of when they think of big-time college athletics.  Of the 201 schools, 130 receive more than a 50% subsidy, so it is common and the numbers are significant. The median subsidy of these 130 schools is $11 million.

No matter how you do the budget accounting, it seems safe to conclude that for the majority of D1 schools, athletics is not a money-making activity. In that sense, D1 college sports is more like schools of music than the NBA or NFL.

In an upcoming post I'll take a look at the other end of the rankings where the numbers look distinctly different.

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