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PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.
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« There's probably no god. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life. | Main | Why can't we have this shown in the US? »
Category: Academics
Posted on: October 21, 2008 9:58 AM, by PZ Myers
John Wilkins just had to ruin my morning.
The bad news is that those of us who teach at small liberal arts institutions have significantly smaller bars than the averages there. The good news is that our football coaches also get nowhere near that amount of money.
Comments
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp, KoT, OM | October 21, 2008 10:03 AM
Just for the sake of argument....
I wonder how much revenue the Football program at a major Div 1 school brings in compared to the biology department?
Posted by: penn | October 21, 2008 10:05 AM
Can the football coaches bar actually be the median? That doesn't seem possible among all Doctoral degree granting universities. I do notice the title says "average and median". Is he mixing means and medians in the same plot?
Posted by: S.Scott | October 21, 2008 10:05 AM
I don't think it's just football coaches that make more money than educators. Nearly every other profession on the planet makes more money.
Posted by: Enzyme | October 21, 2008 10:06 AM
Grad students get $17k? Jeeezus. I got nowt. I'm clearly in the wrong country/ field.
Posted by: Addie | October 21, 2008 10:06 AM
It's still so sad how little important people like teachers and professors bring in compared to things that should be considered less important. That's what happens when you trade intelligent goals for purely economic ones I suppose.
-A
Posted by: tsg | October 21, 2008 10:06 AM
All that means is people care more about sports than they do about academics, which is what the disparity in the salaries is pointing out anyway.
Posted by: S.Scott | October 21, 2008 10:08 AM
P.S. - My husband is a HS Biology teacher - please send $$$$! ;-)
Posted by: penn | October 21, 2008 10:09 AM
Reading the footnote I see the administrators are medians and the rest are means. I think the median football coach salary has to be a lot lower. Still higher than the others, but probably about half of the mean.
Posted by: Jello | October 21, 2008 10:10 AM
Tell me something I don't know. This is sad but not shocking.
Posted by: PZ Myers | October 21, 2008 10:11 AM
The "coaches bring in more money" argument is the ENTIRE FUCKING PROBLEM. Why should having students bash into each other on a Saturday afternoon be more profitable than having students demonstrate knowledge and expertise?
If we offered gladiatorial games or live sex shows, those would also make a great deal more money than even football games. Shall we start offering blood&dismemberment scholarships, or better yet, prostitution scholarships?
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp, KoT, OM | October 21, 2008 10:11 AM
Well obviously. But schools do need money and you sell what sells.
I'm not saying it's right, just asking the question.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp, KoT, OM | October 21, 2008 10:13 AM
Like I said, I understand that and agree it is ludicrous. I'm just curious.
Posted by: Jeff | October 21, 2008 10:14 AM
PZ,
If I could drive up to see you speak AND catch a live sex show on campus, I'd be there for sure! I think you're on to something.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp, KoT, OM | October 21, 2008 10:16 AM
I think you're on to something. Think of all the football fans that would frequent the on campus prostitution labs.
Posted by: penn | October 21, 2008 10:17 AM
It's clear a societal preference issue. I think universities should definitely offer athletics. If athletics make buckets of money for the university, then universities should definitely invest in them to make more money. The universities are only being rational. The problem is that we as a society are willing to spend billions on college athletics instead of on academics. But, that is a much harder problem to fix.
Posted by: spgreenlaw | October 21, 2008 10:18 AM
Just for the sake of argument....
I wonder how much revenue the Football program at a major Div 1 school brings in compared to the biology department?
And therein lies a major problem with capitalism. Even things that ought to exist for the good of the public (schools, hospitals, resources like water, electricity, and the internet) serve profits first and the people second. It infuriates me that teachers (who do such important life changing work in the classroom and research in labs, libraries, and the field) get paid so little compared to people who coach. I'm not saying that coaching isn't important (okay... maybe I am) but seriously, it's not hard to see that education is more important in almost every area, save the checkbook.
Posted by: James F | October 21, 2008 10:19 AM
We clearly need rides that go past the labs, like in Jurassic Park.
*ducks*
Posted by: Greg | October 21, 2008 10:20 AM
"prostitution scholarships"
I think there is a campaign that needs spearheading.
Posted by: Sili | October 21, 2008 10:21 AM
Disgusting.
But I've always been sportually challenged.
Does anyone have any numbers on how much unis and the state spends on sports per year? I'd love to have some statistics to compare to NASA and the LHC. I feel pretty damn sure that the profitable spinoffs from foottie are a lot less than either of those two.
True, the injured sportians can be the first to test our improved scanners, but ...
Posted by: Virgil | October 21, 2008 10:21 AM
The numbers have improved significantly over the past few years. In 1994 I got $6k as a grad student in England, and my starting post-doc salary back in 1998 was $26k. Grad students are now getting $25k at my institution (private univ. in the northeast). As a P.I. you'd be lucky to employ a starting post-doc these days for under $35k (unless you're a slave-driver with a lab' in a big city that the kids want to live in, in which case you can pay them $25k).
I'd be interested to see the M/F split at the Dean/President level, and across the board, rather than just for professors. Heck, why not show the split for coaches too - do female football coaches earn less?
Posted by: spgreenlaw | October 21, 2008 10:23 AM
I see my tags have been misplaced. Oh dear.
Just for the sake of argument....
I wonder how much revenue the Football program at a major Div 1 school brings in compared to the biology department?
That is how it should be.
Posted by: Katharine | October 21, 2008 10:23 AM
The blood and dismemberment would at least kill off the idiots.
Posted by: rob | October 21, 2008 10:24 AM
prostitution scholarships? would that entail any lab work?
Posted by: spgreenlaw | October 21, 2008 10:26 AM
OK. That one was definitely not my fault. I double checked that the close tag followed the entire quote. Ugh.
Posted by: freelunch | October 21, 2008 10:27 AM
I wonder how much revenue the Football program at a major Div 1 school brings in compared to the biology department?
What's it matter when the expenses for most of them exceed the revenues?
Posted by: Paul Lundgren | October 21, 2008 10:29 AM
Rev. BDC and Dr. Myers:
The question of football coaches' salaries is this: how much of that revenue goes to the school in general? It's my understanding most of it goes back into the athletic department. So football and men's basketball are the sports that bankroll the rest of the athletic departments, which are really just little fiefdoms unto themselves.
And if you REALLY want to get depressed, think of this: The highest-paid employee of your government is a football coach. Or at least, Bobby Ross was until he retired after last season. We don't know how much his successor, Stan Brock, is making because they're keeping it secret.
Have a lovely day, and enjoy the bologna sandwich.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp, KoT, OM | October 21, 2008 10:30 AM
spggreenlaw, sometimes if there are line breaks in the middle of tags the lower lines lose the formatting.
Posted by: Vidar | October 21, 2008 10:31 AM
No wonder american education is going down hill. You people spend all your time bashing your skulls into each other on a grassy field instead of, you know, getting an education.
Here's an idea: seperate football from school. If kids want to play football, let them join a local football club outside of school, instead of waisting precious time and money on the dime of the educational system.
Posted by: arachnophilia | October 21, 2008 10:31 AM
small liberal arts institutions may have smaller bars, but they have better bars.
seriously, when's the last time you went to a bar near a major college?
Posted by: spgreenlaw | October 21, 2008 10:32 AM
Oh, thanks Rev. HTML is not my forte (as you could probably tell).
Posted by: penn | October 21, 2008 10:32 AM
Virgil, there are no female American football coaches at the college level.
Posted by: Nerd of Redhead | October 21, 2008 10:33 AM
My undergraduate university is also a football factory. They do so well, it funds the whole athletic department and all the other sports, so athletics are not a drain on the general fund.
Still, professorial salaries run behind industrial salaries for the same years of experience. I'm willing to increase my taxes to bring salaries up to parity, but many other people aren't.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp, KoT, OM | October 21, 2008 10:35 AM
Is that actually the case?
I think that Paul L. probably has it right that most of the money stays in the "family" and is spent on the same athletic department.
The issue that is, at least in my no-data wild guess, that the majority of the money coming from alumni is for the pigskin and not the beaker.
But what other benefits does that have for the rest of the school? Notoriety to prospective students? Name recognition?
Does the fact that people recognize NC State for it's basketball team in the early 80's do anything for its fantastic science departments?
Posted by: wazza | October 21, 2008 10:37 AM
Why on earth is sport even mixed with universities like this?
I mean, yes, Waikato University has a rowing team that sometimes competes with Oxford, but basically all sport in uni here is at the amateur level.
Your education system already gets far too little money to be throwing it away on an uninteresting collection of homoerotic* pileups like American Football.
*Not that there's anything wrong with homoerotic pileups, but unless there is a female and mixed-gender version too, the government shouldn't be sponsoring it. Equal opportunity, and all.
Posted by: Pablo | October 21, 2008 10:37 AM
If I could get 50K people pay $50 a pop to watch me teach 6 lectures a year, I'd certainly expect a lot more than what I am getting now.
I'm good, but not that good.
Posted by: Ranson | October 21, 2008 10:38 AM
What'd you expect for $1,000 a week?
/Bill Murray reference
Posted by: Michelle | October 21, 2008 10:38 AM
Just because the guy coaches "kids bashing into each other" doesn't mean you have to be jealous of him.
School sports are important. Yea, it's a bit quite much very overpaid, but it's a SPORT. All damn sports have high salaries.
Posted by: moother | October 21, 2008 10:40 AM
every morning when i wake up i thank the lord for 3 things:
1) that i'm still alive
2) that it's still as stiff as it was yesterday morning
3) that i dont live in the USA
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp, KoT, OM | October 21, 2008 10:40 AM
that should be
Did the fact that people recognized NC State for it's basketball team in the early 80's do anything for its fantastic science departments?
Posted by: dean | October 21, 2008 10:46 AM
"I wonder how much revenue the Football program at a major Div 1 school brings in compared to the biology department?"
There is the rub. Reports indicate that only (at most) the top 10% of athletic programs make money, the rest run at a deficit and sponge of the general fund of the university. There are cases where the deficit has been so large that the money from BCS game has still left the departments in the hole. The idea that sterling athletic programs are a plus monetarily for schools is now false (it isn't clear that it ever was true).
Posted by: Zbu | October 21, 2008 10:47 AM
The interesting thing about this disparity is how the students fare. Exactly what is the rate of college sports players that go into the big leagues again? I can bet good money that most of them do not go anywhere after their college days, meaning that they wasted their time playing for some lotteryesque dream instead of preparing for their future doing something worthwhile.
We can complain about the money and the education system, but look at this: college athletes are basically selling their body for some coach to get richer, some university to make a few bucks, and some sports team to save some cash by using our university system as their makeshift training grounds. And what do most of the athletes get? A substandard education that prepares them for nothing but menial grunt work after sports teams get done wrecking their bodies for money.
And universities allow this. That's disgraceful.
Posted by: penn | October 21, 2008 10:47 AM
wazza, women are allowed to play on football teams. A few have, mostly as kickers I believe. That's how they get around equal opportunity by claiming football is somehow a co-rec sport.
Posted by: Dave | October 21, 2008 10:52 AM
Its cute, but misleading. The football coaches salary is taken, according to the footnotes, from a survey of Division I coaches, which is a significantly different pool than the average of all doctoral granting universities. I attended two doctoral granting universities, neither was Div-I, and both had football coaches with significantly lower salaries.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp, KoT, OM | October 21, 2008 10:54 AM
@Zbu
While there are players banking on the next step in the sport, it's not 100% accurate that it doesn't have benefits in the "real world" after the college career is over. I'm sure that the majority of players know this.
Again, I'm not saying this is right but it just is what it is.
I know that there are plenty of people who get jobs because of their athletic connections. Not because being a student athlete carries the (not always correct) distinction of being disciplined, but people will hire a former Georgia Bulldog player if they are UGA fans. It just is what it is.
@ dean
I'd still like to see numbers on this. I'm sure it's probably true but I've never actually looked at the numbers. Might have to poke around just for kicks.
Posted by: Pablo | October 21, 2008 10:54 AM
Dave make a fair, although minor, point. It means, for example, that the football salaries do not include the coach from CalTech, or MIT, or the University of Chicago, for example.
Posted by: Quiet_Desperation | October 21, 2008 10:58 AM
I thought diversity was good?
Posted by: Dave | October 21, 2008 11:04 AM
Pablo, Im not sure its minor, quick googling seems to indicate that there are 120 Div-I football schools, compared with over 11,000 doctoral granting institutions in the US.
Posted by: Steve Courtright | October 21, 2008 11:06 AM
These disparities come from the failure of Economists to accurately determine the value of research, knowledge and competent teaching to our economy. It is easy to count heads coming into a stadium. Harder to figure out the value of studies involving species diversity of benthic macroinvertebrates in three Minnesota streams, for example. If science could better put a $ number on contributions made, salaries would go up.
Posted by: mothwentbad | October 21, 2008 11:06 AM
That ruined YOUR morning? I'm a grad student!
Posted by: chris | October 21, 2008 11:11 AM
James Michener wrote a book in the 1980's called Sports in America. It's very interesting, and completely out of the norm for his usual writing.
It's been a long time since I read it, but I recall one of his proposals was to turn the major college football programs into minor leagues operations for the NFL. In other words, Oklahoma, Texas, USC, Florida, Ohio St, Michigan, et al, would have their football operations funded by one of the NFL clubs. Each NFL team would have more than one college to support, and he suggested making it regional, so the Lions are affiliated with the Wolverines, the Cowboys with the Longhorns, etc. The schools would get a certain amount of money each year and the NFL club would get to appoint the coach and have first pick of the players who finish at that school. Players would have to complete their 4 years and receive a degree from the school before being eligible for an NFL contract.
His point was, such schools are essentially NFL feeder programs anyway, why not make it official. Pro clubs would have more control over who goes where, but the school's fans would still have good, competitive teams to root for and the schools would have a guaranteed source of income that would go to the general fund, without the attendant expense of coaches, paying for road trips and so on.
It sounds weird, I know, there are problems, but it's an interesting idea.
Posted by: Arnosium Upinarum | October 21, 2008 11:11 AM
Ya know? This chart rather resembles one I saw showing what the country spends on that OTHER sport...
Posted by: Patricia | October 21, 2008 11:12 AM
moother - You lucky bastard. ;o)
Posted by: Craig | October 21, 2008 11:19 AM
Precisely why I left academia. I was in the middle of a PhD in rhetoric and decided 8K a year just wasn't cutting it. My first year out I made 42K, now with three promotions, I'm just under 80. I'm not bragging, I'd rather work harder and teach but that's not how this system works right now.
Posted by: Bart Mitchell | October 21, 2008 11:19 AM
I've always abdicated spinning off the football teams from college sports. Rent them the college's name, and give the 'student' players a discount on tuition.
College football and collegiate sports have almost nothing in common anymore. It's become the NFL minor league, and should resemble the baseball minors, not academia.
Posted by: Dave | October 21, 2008 11:21 AM
My apologies, my google-fu seems to have been off this morning: There appear to be 413 doctoral granting universities, not the 11,000 I mentioned earlier. I still think thats a significant difference, but clearly much less so.
Posted by: Glen Davidson | October 21, 2008 11:22 AM
Yeah, well, look at the bars for students. If you're slaving away at science and scholarship, generally you're shelling out 10s of thousands of dollars per year, while the jocks are getting (pretty much) a free ride.
I mean, if that doesn't teach you something, what wil?
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Posted by: bernard quatermass | October 21, 2008 11:25 AM
"And therein lies a major problem with capitalism."
Kinda OT, but I've always felt that ANOTHER major problem with the Big C is that if people will PAY for something, someone else will find a way to SELL it to them -- whether it's good for people to have that thing or not.
I think of Hummers. I think, in a lot of cases, of cell phones (sorry - I just do. These things ruined my commute back when I had a long one, and the conversations were dispensible at best). I think of those GODDAMNED CAR HEADLIGHTS THAT ARE SO BRIGHT THEY ALL BUT BLIND DRIVERS IN ONCOMING CARS.
But I'm an elitist SOB into the bargain. :)
Posted by: Craig | October 21, 2008 11:26 AM
Oh, and everyone here should throw $10 bucks this guy's way: http://tinklenberg08.blogspot.com/2008/10/associated-press-has-new-story-up-about.html
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp, KoT, OM | October 21, 2008 11:28 AM
Again that comes back to whether or not the students are actually making money for the School. If they are then their "free ride" is in reality compensation for their time as athletes.
If they aren't generating revenue, then .....
Posted by: Evolving Squid | October 21, 2008 11:30 AM
Because Joe Plumber will pay $75 to see pretend-students bash each other on a saturday afternoon, but isn't interested in paying a dime to see some nerds growing slime in a Petri dish.
A better question might be "Why would an academic institution have a sports program?" The answer, I've always assumed, is "for the money, of course."
Posted by: Glen Davidson | October 21, 2008 11:33 AM
They're contributing to knowledge, society, and civilization. A bunch of self-righteous liberal alumni ought to appreciate that, or did you forget that supposedly the colleges are turning out enlightened people (easy mistake, I know)?
But hell, the gladiators bring in revenue. Screw improvement, we'll stoke our thirst for power over others.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Posted by: c-serpent | October 21, 2008 11:33 AM
Not in the least because the argument may be entirely false. It is my understanding that even within Div 1 schools, athletics is subsidized by the universities, not the other way around. In other words, even with the TV and ad revenues and ticket sales, the costs of the programs exceed their income. But, over the decades it has been traditional for athletic directors to claim university subsidies as athletic dept. income, thus grossly inflating their value. As a result, there are only a handful of programs nationwide that are genuinely profitable, while all of them claim to be profitable. The Chronicle had a large article on this not too long ago.
The one factor that is difficult to calculate is the effect of a successful sports program on enrollment and extramural funding. However, my impression is that donors that give because of sports programs tend to give to sports programs via earmarking their donations.
Even if we accept the capitalist argument that they make money for the university, (a completely fallacious argument for a public university and questionable for a private one) there are serious ethical dilemmas, mainly as a consequence of the amount of money that passes through the program regardless of the source.
Posted by: Sam C | October 21, 2008 11:34 AM
Do any other countries have the bizarre set-up for sports that the USA has?
In Europe, universities and colleges have sports teams, but these are social clubs for ordinary students to play games, not a breeding ground for professional leagues.
If a lad or lass is good at sport and wants to have a go at becoming a professional, s/he joins a local club or the development side of a professional team. It's completely separate from the national education system.
Surely that's the issue? Why the crazy mixture of highly-paid professional sport and under-paid education at one institution?
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp, KoT, OM | October 21, 2008 11:37 AM
Actually Glen I was referring to if the football players aren't actually generating positive revenue.
I know the benefit of the non athletes.
Posted by: Rob | October 21, 2008 11:40 AM
@Pablo:
Way back when I went to undergrad, I calculated that lectures were on the order of $100 each at my school, based on what they were charging per credit hour.
Posted by: Brad D | October 21, 2008 11:49 AM
I'm sure this is how things have been for a very long time. I know my profs were grumbling about it in the mid 90's.
Funny how I never shared any science/math/music/literature/etc. classes with football players. They must have all been remedial general ed. majors. I'm sure there are exceptions, but I never saw them (the kicker doesn't count).
Posted by: Glen Davidson | October 21, 2008 11:51 AM
I tend to think that they are, though, largely due to increases in (or lack of decreases in) enrollment. I know that Gonzaga University (I went there a short time) claims to have boosted its enrollment significantly once their Bulldogs were doing well.
I still think it's a pathetic reason for anyone to go to their school. Perhaps excellence in academia would also have a positive effect, on both school and society.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Posted by: Mr P | October 21, 2008 11:51 AM
Makes me glad to be a Penn State fan. JoePa donated a million bucks to the university a few years ago and it went towards... a library!
I live in Big Orange Tennessee country now and if they lose two games in a row the public is calling for the coach to resign.
Posted by: lylebot | October 21, 2008 11:51 AM
Science departments at R1 universities actually bring in a pretty good amount of money. The university takes some overhead out of every grant awarded---basically a "tax" of anywhere from 45-60% of the total budget depending on university. So if they have a department of 40 professors each bringing in an average of $250,000 per year in grant money, the university is making around $5 million off that department per year just in grant money. These numbers are sort of made up but more or less within a realistic range of a top computer science department. Some departments bring in more per faculty, some less.
In 1999, for instance, Yale's income from grants was $316 million (25% of its total income that year, and the largest single source) link (pdf). Though details are lacking, you can probably assume that the university took at least $150 million of that (the rest went mostly to paying for grad students, postdocs, and faculty summer support, buying equipment, and travel and supplies).
Posted by: spits | October 21, 2008 11:51 AM
Wow. I knew that when I was an undergrad that there was much discussion about how much the coaches made vs. the professors, but the money for the coaches came from an entirely different fund (they really did make in the million dollar range) so it was "okay".
Now, I'm just a poor grad student...
Posted by: wazza | October 21, 2008 12:01 PM
I'm pretty sure that Stanford gets a lot of money out of its science grads...
ever heard of the Stanford Research Institute?
Posted by: James | October 21, 2008 12:03 PM
Credit where it's due: the graph comes from the excellent grad-student web comic PhD Comics.
Posted by: KC | October 21, 2008 12:04 PM
Saw it here right after I posted it to my own blog. Heh. Yeah, I knew no one is in academia to get rich, but this is just ridiculous. Politicians from both parties all say they value education, though, and they wouldn't be lying to us, right? So obviously, it'll get better.
... must. keep. straight. face.
Posted by: Yannis | October 21, 2008 12:07 PM
I guess as a grad student I shouldn't feel too bad since I'm making almost exactly the average (according to the chart). But let me tell you, that 17K doesn't get you anywhere in a place as absurdly expensive as Long Island, NY.
Posted by: Tom Southern | October 21, 2008 12:16 PM
Murray Sperber wrote a book on the subject of athletic budgets a while ago. His conclusion was that at most big sports universities, it was a loss. He found only a couple of football programs made a profit and those didn't consistently do so. He also examined the claim that alumni contributed more if the programs were successful (and hence required high levels of funding). He concluded that they did not consistently do so. In fact, the largest endowments are in universities who will never compete nationally. I am at a university in the mid-level of competition and our football coach is paid less than the figure cited, but at least three times the university president.
Posted by: Onkel Bob | October 21, 2008 12:23 PM
One thing that is missing is that tenured faculty have a position regardless of performance. Coaches on the other hand, the higher the profile, the greater the demand for exceptional performance.
Oh and since 2003, my tuition/fees have increased 400%. I finished my B.A. in 5 semesters and made the foolish mistake of going for an M.A.. Students are viewed by the university as nothing more than cash cows. We are given bogus information (sign up for the thesis course as soon as you complete 9 units) with the specific intent of taking more money from our pockets. (Oh you have to complete that thesis within a year - couldn't do it? oh so sorry, $1800 please if you want to finish your degree.)
I previously believed that politicians and lawyers were the most dishonorable people on the planet. I have since added university administration to the list and they are ahead by a mile.
Posted by: Stoic | October 21, 2008 12:28 PM
Hey, I never knew they paid grad students, or is that in only some disciplines?
Posted by: JStein | October 21, 2008 12:38 PM
Way to kill my morning with how much grad students make. That's going to be me in a couple of years.
Posted by: Ollie | October 21, 2008 12:46 PM
Grad students in some disciplines get paid. I love art, but a physics grad student working on a microchip design has something considerably more valuable to sell than interpretive pasta by an art grad student.
Anybody have specific links to the Chronicle articles on the matter? I'm going to borrow the Beer And Circus book from my university library, but I'd like to see some of the articles, too. My google-fu has been fairly weak so far.
Posted by: George | October 21, 2008 12:52 PM
Well that's free market capitalism for you. A person is worth what the market will pay. Period. Any one who complains is clearly a socialist or worse, un American, not a problem for me because like most people on this planet I am what many Americans frequently refer to as an Alien. Though I gather these days furrunur or similar is more popular.
Posted by: BMcP | October 21, 2008 12:56 PM
Well to be fair, the large football programs are very profitable and do bring in large dollars to the universities they are a part of, not to mention those all important alumni dollars. This of course allows for the funds to be diverted to research. Without such programs, it would be more difficult to acquire such funds since they either have to come through more taxes (good luck with that) or raising already ridiculously high tuition.
This is also true of many of the other sports programs in the NCAA.
Posted by: Natalie | October 21, 2008 12:58 PM
Stoic, they pay grad students who are working for the university in some capacity. Teaching undergraduate classes and working in a lab as a research assitant are the only two common jobs I can think of for grad students, but I imagine there are others.
Posted by: Carol | October 21, 2008 1:06 PM
I would like to note that on that graphic, the "untenured" blocks appear to belong to untenured, but full-time professors.
Adjunct, or contingent faculty, which makes up a huge proportion of teaching staff at most universities and colleges, seem to be unrepresented on that graph.
If they were, they would appear right above "grad student" by a very small margin.
Posted by: MikeM | October 21, 2008 1:09 PM
After my nephew's experience with "big-time" college athletics, after which he was deluded into thinking he was a pro prospect (he was waived from an American Basketball League team), I'm just so angry at college athletics.
For most campuses, it's a drain on their budgets. Sure, if you're at Michigan or Ohio or Florida, your university probably experiences a net gain, but for most universities, it just doesn't work out. Many universities have dropped their football programs for just this reason.
Ongoing discussions of all these issues can be found at www.fieldofschemes.com and www.thesportseconomist.com.
Sadly, this even extends beyond universities. Municipalities around the country (world, even) continue to fund sports facilities... San Antonio, Dallas, New York (read up on the new Yankees stadium if you really want to make your blood boil), Portland, Seattle, Sacramento... Just a few examples.
Instead of draining budgets for universities, projects like the ones listed above drain the general fund of money that should be used for transportation, health care, housing for the homeless, and so forth.
I partake in individual sports, and I pay for it myself.
There's nothing wrong with being an NBA or NFL fan, you should just be willing to pay for it. That's all. If that means tickets on the third deck cost $200 each, then so be it.
Posted by: BMcP | October 21, 2008 1:14 PM
Not sure what the divisions in revenue are for all universities, but for Notre Dame in 2007, the football program was worth $91 million with the income being distributed as so:
$23.5 million for non-football athletics
$23.2 million for general academic use for the university.
It may vary widely though how profits are divided for the other universities.
Posted by: noncarborundum | October 21, 2008 1:18 PM
My dad got his degree at Ohio State, and once told me a possibly apocryphal story about a sign in the president's office there:
"Our goal is to build a university our football team can be proud of."
Posted by: Ian | October 21, 2008 1:21 PM
It looks like there's some good news in that graph too: the gender gap for untenured professors is less than the gender gap for tenured professors. Hopefully, as the untenured professors gain tenure and new professors are hired, the gap will continue to decrease.
Posted by: Seamyst | October 21, 2008 1:35 PM
I believe the grad student salaries are for students in Ph.D science programs; there's a huge difference between $17K and $5,500, which is what I make as a MA history student.
Posted by: varlo | October 21, 2008 1:44 PM
At a few places, including my a.m., Kansas, the basketball coach makes more than the football coach. (Of course he usually has a better year.) I suspect the same is true at Kentucky, Duke, North Carolina,and perhaps UCLA, which normally does better in football than the others. At least at Kansas, ticket revenue is only part of the AD income. If yuou don't donate BIG bucks to the AD you won't be getting a seat in Allen Fieldhouse. (The grandson of the man the fieldhouse is named for apparently lost his longtime season tickets a few years back for that reason. At the same time, the programs there DO pay the way for revenue-poor sports such as volleyball, crew, baseball, etc., and nearly all womens' programs. Good or bad? Who knows? But while longtime statistics may not bear it out, when a school has an unusually good year (as Kansas had last year with an Orange Bowl win and a basketball national championship) alumni donations to the general fund do increase. Let's face it; big time sports is part of the entertainment industry, and while I would just as soon cheer for Hallmark Cards or Kansas City Power and Light as for the KC Chiefs, not all feel that way. Unfair and ill-suited to the purposes of a university? Probably so, but only at YOUR school. I, on the other hand, am lookign forward with anticipation to the start of the new basketball season. So there!
Posted by: Hap | October 21, 2008 1:56 PM
The only financial argument that seems to make sense is if the athletic program generates donations to other parts of the university, ones tha