Letter: Athletic spending drives up tuition and fees
November 16, 2016
The CSU administration continues to make misleading claims about rising tuition, some of which are repeated in the Collegian’s Oct 26 article on “The Exponential Rise of Tuition Beyond Inflation.”
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For example, President Tony Frank blames the increase in tuition on cuts in state support. That is simply not true. Tuition has risen by far more than was needed to offset cuts in state support.
CSU’s budget for the next fiscal year shows that tuition increases will add $18.8 million to university revenues. Yet state budget cuts are projected to reduce revenues by only $0.1 million.
What is the university doing with all the additional money from tuition increases? Unfortunately, it is not spending more on academics. As President Frank notes, instructional spending per student has remained flat. Instead, the university has used the additional money to dramatically increase spending on athletics, especially football.
CSU athletic spending has risen from $26.0 million to $38.8 million since Tony Frank was appointed president in 2009. Over the same period, revenues from ticket sales, contributions and other athletic enterprises rose from $14.2 million to just $18.0 million.
Driving up costs faster than revenues would be a losing strategy in any industry aside from higher education. CSU is forced to make up the difference by subsidizing athletics with increased tuition and fees.
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According to the NCAA, total athletic subsidies at CSU came to $20.4 million in 2015. That has driven up the cost of education much more than state budget cuts.
During Tony Frank’s tenure as president of CSU, athletic subsidies have risen by 70% while academic budgets have been cut or frozen. Students have been paying more and more for their education but getting less and less in return.
The administration has tried to deny and deflect these basic facts. That has led them into some very questionable claims about tuition and fees at CSU.
For example, Lynn Johnson, a CSU vice president, has claimed that raising the minimum wage would force the university to raise student fees or to cut budgets. Yet CSU would be able to afford the minimum wage increase if it reduced its huge subsidies of athletics. Blaming its lowest paid workers for student fee increases is divisive and dishonest.
President Frank has set CSU on a permanent path toward much higher athletic spending. Football coach Mike Bobo’s $1.45 million salary is the highest in the Mountain West. Lynn Johnson should blame his excessive pay for the university’s inability to afford the minimum wage increase.
The new stadium will eliminate tailgating, force students to re-park their cars on game days, and drive up ticket prices. It is hard to see how students benefit from this boondoggle. Yet they are the ones at risk since their tuition and fees will have to be raised even further in the likely event that the stadium cannot generate sufficient revenues to cover its own costs.
Tuition and fees have risen far too much in large part because of excessive spending on costly non-essentials like football. Blaming it on cuts in state support is nothing more than a way for the CSU administration to avoid responsibility for its own bad values and choices.
by Steven Shulman
Professor of Economics
Steven Shulman is a CSU professor of economics and research director for the Center for the Study of Academic Labor. Send comments and requests for sources to steven.shulman@colostate.edu.
Perseus • Dec 2, 2016 at 5:40 pm
Losses from the stadium will be hidden just like the twenty million missing from the program in 2014.
Perseus • Nov 20, 2016 at 9:31 pm
I resent my tuition dollars and fees being spent on football. Building 42000 seat stadium without enough parking is stupid.
CSURam_06 • Nov 22, 2016 at 3:23 pm
Maybe you should have chosen a school that doesn’t have a football program…..
CSURamT • Nov 18, 2016 at 4:20 pm
Please leave CSU, Mr. Shulman. You have lost this debate numerous times. Your numbers dont add up. They have never added up. Athletics is a very small piece of the pie. Yes, more money is being spent on athletics now than in 2009. At the same time more students are attending CSU, more private donations are coming to CSU, and CSU is seeing a record in fundraising. Amazing how you are unable to to corolate any of that to the exposure and engagement from athletics. Fact is students are paying the exact same % of their student fees (which they approve btw) on Athletics as they always have. If you think the rise in tuition is going all toward athletics, that is ridiculous. It is going for raises for professors such as yourself (maybe you should return your salary increase since 2009), improvements in the academics facilities at CSU (not one penny of student $ has gone to the new stadium) of which there are dozens of terrific new facilities for students, advancement of programs, and retention of talent. All things that have led CSU to be one of the top public institutions in the State and country. If you dont like it, then leave. We are tired of your complaining of the same thing over and over again while in the meantime, CSU is getting incredibly successful results under the leadership of Dr. Frank, his administration, and the exposure of the Athletic Department.
Lets close the econ Department • Nov 18, 2016 at 4:30 pm
Totally agree, he should be fired for mis-stating facts yet again. Maybe he should spend his time trying to find a 50 million donor for his school. Hell maybe even a 5 million dollar donor.
northernlights • Nov 19, 2016 at 1:46 pm
Tyler Shannon! You climbed out of the bottom of the swamp to comment, huh? I was wondering how long it would take for your stink to appear and you would start claiming he isn’t fit to teach economics because he writes against football spending. And I must say, for someone with a college degree, you really need to learn sentence construction, grammar and spelling. Spent too much time as a football groupie and didn’t take your education seriously? How has that degree worked out for you, anyway?
southernlights • Nov 20, 2016 at 10:02 am
Dr Debbbbbbb! You climbed out of the bottom of the swamp to comment, huh? I was wondering how long it would take for your stink to appear and when you would find an outlet for your vitriol after having been banned by the local the paper. And I must say, for someone with a PhD, you really need learn how to count the number of letters in your own name. Spent too much time as an anti-football groupie and didn’t take your education seriously? How has that degree in Facebook stalking worked out for you, anyway?
CSURamT • Nov 20, 2016 at 4:42 pm
Deb, for someone who believes her name is spelled with 8 letters, not sure you are one to give advice on spelling. Sadly you have reduced your arguements to sentence structure in a comment section. What is next for your failed arguements? Clothing mismatches I assume. I guess that is all you can do since every single failed arguement of the past that you tried to make has been completely debunked and sadly your husband has to make stuff up to try to make a point. One which he has consistently failed at.
My degree that I paid for (unlike you) is great and I am excited that the value of it is consistently increasing with the quality of the university every day thanks in large part to the exposure of our university due to football, the vision of Dr. Frank, and hundreds of millions in donations to the university. By the way, how much has your husband raised for the Econ Department this year? My understanding is it is one of the least donated to departments in the university. Maybe he should take a look in the mirror and realize that when things are working for everyone else accept his own department, maybe it isn’t everyone else that is the problem. His incredible jealously of football and the athletic department is holding his own department back, and everyone but him knows it. But back to my degree, it is working out great for me. I have a job, you?
ripperduck • Nov 25, 2016 at 6:55 pm
Wow, got to hand to you Ram baby, you finally said something sensible. If the econ dept,, or any other department for that matter, cannot make it on its own, then it should be shut down. The Athletic Department, by the way, can’t make a go of it. Those guys need over 1/2 of it’s budget covered by student fees and academic subsidies. Gee, your AD a few years ago decided to just go out and build stadiums, hire coaches for millions of dollars, all of which hasn’t made the department any more economically stable. Not if you have to keep getting bailed out by the academic side.
With that paid for degree of yours, you must know that what you’ve been spewing has to be applied to the Athletic Department. So when can we see how well you use that great education to get rid of the biggest money loser at CSU? Better hurry, if you don’t, people will think that you’re a hypocrite and that a degree doesn’t equate with intelligence….
ripperduck • Nov 24, 2016 at 9:15 pm
Actually, student loans are the collateral for all the building projects going on at CSU and every other uni. That’s why tuition has skyrocketed at unis, because all of the ridiculous building projects which have NO academic purpose, like the ones at CSU, have to be supported with student debt. Are you so stupid as to think that a bond investor is going to re-posses any building project on any campus if that uni goes into default? And don’t give us the nonsense that can’t happen, it’s going on at LSU and several IL public unis. Given the quality of your thinking, yeah, I guess you just might. The collateral isn’t the building, it’s the cash flow coming from the students. The UC faculty has written extensively of this scam going on at all unis, including CSU.
They Pledged Your Tuition
cucfa.org/news.2009_oct11.php
Further, 43% of all student loans are no longer being serviced, i.e. not being paid, because the economy is terrible and the efficacy of a college degree continues to erode.
http://www.wsj.com/more-than-40-of-student-borrowers-aren‘t-making-payment-1459971
It was 48% a couple years ago, but the FEDS instituted a program which gave a few cash strapped debtors some relief. If that’s taken away, then the number will go up to 50%. So who cares if more students are attending college than a few years ago? It’s ridiculous for unis to go into any kind of debt, and plain stupid for anyone to attend a uni which has no interest in serving anyone but Wall Street bond palaces and politically connected building contractors…
CSURamT • Nov 25, 2016 at 7:46 am
The collateral for the new stadium is not student loans. The collateral is the revenue generated by the stadium and ths facility itself. Because unlike most facilites oncampus, the stadium generates $ seperate from student tuition. And CSU is already far exceeding the required amounts generates necessary to pay those bonds. Many universities are paying for their stadiums with student money but CSU isnt one of them and have made that very clear. CSU is at 168% proforma for sponsorships (actually higher now), 110% proforma for naming rights (which is going to go much higher once a corporate partner buys the other half of the naming rights), and 133% proforma of premium seating sales (higher now because they are 100% sold out now). All of this stuff pays for the stadium. So you can believe what you want, but what you are saying does not relate to the arguement at hand.
ripperduck • Nov 25, 2016 at 5:56 pm
This is typical uni PR boilerplate. The bonds are multiyear and neither you nor anyone else can claim that there will be enough revenue generated by the stadium to pay debt service for the entire length of the bond. Give us your studies which guarantee that ten years from now, long after the novelty has worn off, the stadium will make enough money to pay for its own upkeep, much less the debt service. After all your yapping, this is Colorado State University, which has no legacy of outstanding football, nor anything athletic for that matter. So why does anyone with any common sense think that will change?
Bond investors know full well all of what I’m talking about, as do the UC profs which did the detail study as to how those build-outs are collateralized. The only know cash flow that will exist for the length of the bond term are the student loans. That’s exactly what those investors want and know will be there, not your stupid naming rights. That’s why the massive push for university construction, because the FEDS are the leg breakers which will enforce the terms of student loans, or force taxpayers to pay for defaulted debt. Wall Street wants in on that waterfall of cash and they have long been lobbying for the building of any and every stupid vanity project on American campuses. CSU is no different. And it is idiotic, unless you’re shill like this guy, to spend hundreds of millions on a venue that is empty nearly 90% of the year.
If any of you want a real world example of university athletic construction boondoggles, all one need do is investigate the Matthew Knight Arena at University of Oregon. The same garbage was promulgated by the bond/athletic department pimps of how the building will pay for itself, how Uncle Phil Knight was going to pay $25 million for naming rights, the money from premium seating will more than make the project efficacious, and all of the other events that will come to Eugene OR, making PKA a cash cow. All garbage, no one attends because they cannot afford the seating, the arena is losing money and becoming a money pit, and it’s only seven years in existence. Don’t say you weren’t warned…
Brad • Nov 29, 2016 at 9:25 am
Wow, such salty responses. You and Northern must get along splendidly. I tell you what, keep rubbing that crystal ball you have to a fine sheen while preaching to us what you know will happen and I’ll just take the numbers that are actually in hand. The “boondoggle” brigade is nothing if not consistent, stories of bogeymen to scare the children.
I’ll pose the same question to you that I did a few months back to Northern: (1) Provide me one shred of actual evidence that the stadium has increased student fees. (2) Detail your plan for how the required maintenance for Hughes was going to be paid for without impacting student fees or the General Fund. Remember, no donor support and no options for revenue bonds to finance the work.
Lets see if you can do any better than Northern. My guess is it will progress along the same lines as the previous exchange, you will deflect, provide wild, yet meaningless generalizations and ultimately resort to accusing me of being any number of things, from a misogynist to a PR person for the AD. I’m pulling for you, make me proud.
ripperduck • Nov 30, 2016 at 6:18 pm
It’s apparent that the unis are in the middle of a crisis. They can’t keep competent shills and the quality of the flacking degrades over time. They get guys like Brad that aren’t good at what they do and are transparent. which results in the poor quality of work apparent with Brad’s post. They’re given a list of things they cannot mention, meaning student loans and their role in financing non-academic junk such as football stadiums. Instead, they try to dodge that fact by bringing up student fees and get you to think that both student loans and fess are the same thing. They ain’t, just so you know.
It’s really pathetic actually, you have to feel sorry for guys like Brad. They can’t find jobs, they need to pay bills, most likely student loans, so they’ll take any thing that’s thrown their way. And of course, at all costs, they cannot respond to what UC professors have found regarding student loans/Wall Street/tuition increases and how they all fit together. So they have no response to the fact that they have ZERO evidence that any athletic buildout will be capable of paying for itself ten years after the doors are opened. But when you know what to look for, it becomes so easy to show them up for the yobbs that they’ve become….
Brad • Dec 1, 2016 at 4:35 pm
Are you and Northern twins? It’s astonishing the levels of deflection over two simple questions. You simply could have declined to answer or at the very least attempted to address one or both but you followed the very template outlined in my previous post. Bless your heart, never change “boondoggle brigade”.
Just for you I will go ahead and revise the first question to better fit your narrative. Provide me one shred of actual evidence that the revenue bonds used to finance the stadium have directly impacted student “loans”. Watch out for wrist injuries shaking that Magic 8 Ball too many times trying to find your “evidence”. The problem is whatever you come up with (guessing nothing) will amount to white noise. The two questions I posed that you couldn’t or didn’t want to answer are the genesis of how the stadium came to be. If you can’t put forward reasonable solutions for those two issues the rest of your diatribe is akin to howling at the moon. The SOSH/anti’s crowd could never grasp this simple concept all throughout the process and it seems the passage of time hasn’t illuminated the issue any better for some of you.
I do appreciate your response though, I can now add yobb, unemployed, uni shill (incompetent variety) and deadbeat debtor to my previous list of desirable qualities of being an AD PR person and misogynist according to Northern. I’m a regular renaissance man. Who knew? So many skills, so little time.
Lets close the econ Department • Nov 18, 2016 at 4:18 pm
I think someone is sad because they did not get a 20% raise. They have to work 20 hours a week on average for the year, and whine that they are under paid and deserve more. I am sure you are tenured, but if you were an employee of any outside company and were this disrespectful to your supervisor, you would be fired. You probably would not know this though, because you probably have never held a real job.
Simply put if you do not like this things that are happening around you, like the new academic buildings, increased student growth, growth in academic ratings, and yes growth in athletics, then you should put in your resignation and go work somewhere else.
How come nobody ahs donated 50 million to your department? Or even 5-10 million like many other departments have received?
hmm, makes me wonder.
Loser
CSURamT • Nov 20, 2016 at 4:45 pm
There isnt an outside company that would hire him.
ripperduck • Nov 25, 2016 at 6:04 pm
The only entity that will hire a shill like you is a uni. No wonder tuition is going up, unis have to have a legion of trolls and shills like you. Tell us how it is to live your life as a cliche….
Perseus • Nov 29, 2016 at 7:25 pm
“Implements construction and tower safety”
Murph • Nov 18, 2016 at 11:49 am
What a bunch of garbage. Go somewhere else if you don’t like it. Students who feel that way can do the same. I for one am happy with a university that strives to make improvements in all facets of the school, including athletics. If you argue that CSU is falling behind on the academic side, then you are clearly grasping at straws.
ripperduck • Nov 25, 2016 at 6:08 pm
Hey Sparky, show us the detailed studies that prove that all of the spending on athletics has made CSU academically better. BTW, tuition back in the 80s was a fraction of what it is today, when hardly anyone cared or attended Ram football. Did those students from thirty years ago have a worse academic experience that those that now pay multiple times more, with a stadium boondoggle as well? Put that degree to work and show us that you’re not as stupid as your post would indicate….
Chunk • Nov 16, 2016 at 11:07 pm
Over the past year, CSU saw record high enrollment, record high tuition, and record high fundraising. Oh, and a 2% across-the-board “budget reallocation” (what most of us call “cuts”) to academics. When put together, those facts paint a frightening picture for the fiscal future of CSU. Where is the growth going to come from to service this 1.5 billion dollars in debt? The college and town are already bursting at the seams.
Let’s hope there are a lot more major donors lined up. That huge gift to engineering is amazing and much needed!
Chad • Nov 19, 2016 at 2:53 pm
The catch with the gift to engineering- I’ve never trusted the general administration not to simply underfund the engineering department by the same amount, and then spend their newfound $53M wherever they please (e.g., fancy stadiums)
Worf Son of Mogg • Nov 16, 2016 at 7:20 pm
A football team that has been mediocre at best. (No ones building stadiums for women’s volleyball or basketball, teams that in recent history haven’t sucked.)Consistently upgrading facilities that have no need for upgrades.(During my tenure a beautiful library was “upgraded” and someone decided that building a Borg cube in front of it was aesthetically pleasing.) Finally my rant will end with the health center. Why would they spend money on rebuilding Hartshorn 5ish years ago just to build a mini hospital/research center?
I didnt go to CU or live in Boulder for a reason.
Go Broncos
RTNorton • Nov 18, 2016 at 11:17 am
Men’s F’ball & Hoops pays the bill & more importantly DRIVES OUT-OF-STATE APPLICATIONS
Perseus • Nov 20, 2016 at 9:35 pm
Not worth the millions it costs to subsidize the programs however you calculate.
ripperduck • Nov 24, 2016 at 8:47 pm
Wow, what fantastic thinking! Take on public debt/bonds placed on the backs of CO taxpayers, in order to finance athletic buildouts, so as to entice very stupid and naive out of state teenagers to pay up to four times more in tuition than if they stayed home. All the while residents cannot attend their own public unis BECAUSE THEIR TAXES ARE USED TO ATTRACT OUT-OF-STATE APPLICATIONS.