When I received my financial aid information for the upcoming semester at Rutgers I was dismayed to find out that I would primarily have to take out loans to attend classes. During a year in which I'll have to pinch a few more pennies I also received less grant money, only about $800, so my options were to either leave school to work full time or take the loans. I decided to stay, and to my surprise I received a letter last week saying that an extra $100 has been tacked on to the grant. I didn't know about it immediately, but it is probably because the university president, Richard McCormick, decided to give a $100,000 back to students to help make the 8.5% rise in tuition from last year seem less egregious.
I appreciate McCormick's gesture but the financial bump is equivalent to giving a homeless person a dollar and walking away; it is not going to fix the problem. Tuition has been climbing ever higher over the past few years and the ill-conceived Rutgers football stadium project may very well run the university deeper into the red during a time of state financial crisis. Indeed, although investigations into the dealings of the Rutgers athletics departments are said to have been launched a naive "support our troops" type mentality still pervades the state. If you criticize the bloated football program you're characterized as a whiny no-nothing who doesn't realize all the good multi-million dollar coach Schiano has done for the school and the state. Pardon me if I'm not as star-struck by RU's so-so record on the field; there is no indication that football performance is going to ease the financial strains of the university.
Rutgers is an expensive school with an expensive coach, a very pricey and mediocre state university, and there does not appear to be any support for the idea that winning a few games will mean new classrooms, more academic positions, and sorely-needed improvements many academic departments have been clamoring for. While Schiano is getting $2,000,000 some of my professors and I have had to evacuate buildings due to smoking boilers we're told there is no money to repair, and it doesn't look like the money for such basic improvements is going to come anytime soon. A glossy veneer is being put on the university, from a new football stadium to new dorms and plans for a "greenway," but inside the shiny apple is a rotten core.
In any essay entitled "College Sports Inc." published in Contemporary Issues in the Sociology of Sport, Murray Sperber explains that, if considered according to business standards, the vast majority of college athletic programs lose money. A few break even or make small profits but generally sports programs wind up in the red, their losses absorbed by the university (often involving some creative accounting.) A successful team that packs the stadium can still end up with a financial shortfall, and many institutions continue to foot the bill despite poor performance. Even if Rutgers again makes it to a prized bowl game, events popularly thought to have huge payouts, the university might still lose money on the event. This is because it is common practice to rack up the bill by transporting, housing, and feeding administrators, alumni, families of the players, etc. so they can attend. (In fact, when Rutgers got to the Insight Bowl a few years ago they spent at least $90,000 on mementos commemorating the event, and overall their expenses exceeded the money received for playing the game.) The visibility the university is given by the bowl games is expected to result in later payoffs, and so it seems athletic departments have no problem going overboard during such events. Likewise, there is little indication that a big time sports program consistently draws more top students. Applications might go up following victories but this does not necessarily benefit the school, particularly at a place like Rutgers that seems to be overbooking itself (in previous years some students have had to be put up in hotels for lack of dorm space) just to bring some more cash in.
More specifically, Rutgers recently announced that it is going to pay Kent State $750,000 to come and play at the New Brunswick stadium in 2012. I guess the athletic administration thinks we have something to prove. I hope to be far and away from this wretched university by then, but the price tag is exorbitant and I do not envy the position of students in 2012 when the tuition bills will arrive in the mail. (It is expected that the football team will kick ass every year from 2008 to 2012, the expanded stadium bringing in enough money for such frivolity. I guess we'll have to see.) Keep in mind that the university is going to have to take out at least $72 million in loans (if not more) to finish the stadium expansion on a timetable that allows them to retain head football coach Greg Schiano, and there has been some talk of essentially taxing the hell out of students via tuition & fees to pay for the shortfall since money from donors has not shown up. As is related in a New York Times editorial on the subject Rutgers really is suffering from a "football fantasy."
Although I have little doubt that the Rutgers football program will only feed itself (and provide almost no benefit for the university as a whole) I do hope they succeed if for no other reason that they are able to pay off the huge loans taken out to give them a new stadium. If they don't the money is going to have to come from somewhere, and despite McCormick's recent show of generosity an 8.5% tuition increase might seem relatively minor if debts cannot be repaid. Whether the RU team will be successful or not is anyone's guess, though. CBSSports writer Dennis Dodd predicts that Rutgers will come in 6th in the Big East conference, the analyst predicting another lackluster season for the team.
There's a lot left to be uncovered and resolved that goes beyond whether or not coach Greg Schiano got some sweet perks to keep him at the university. The "lack of transparency" exhibited in Schianogate is disturbing, but it is greatly overshadowed by the financial incompetence that characterizes this administration. Rutgers has shown itself to be football obsessed, suffering from delusions of grandeur after one good season. At best the football program will not particularly harm the university if it can fund itself, but during this time of financial strain in the university and the state it is very likely that students are going to be footing the bill for a big-time gamble. This isn't a new trend (see Confessions of a Spoilsport for the rise of big-time sports at RU and Beer and Circus for a general overview) but it certainly has become more alarming in the present climate. If anything, though, I hope concerned journalists, students, faculty, alumni, and citizens continue to keep at the case and not let it be whitewashed when the fall season starts in a few weeks. I'm sure the administration will try, but this is something bigger than one game, season, or football team.
[And look at this... I wound up on the nj.com blog.]
- Log in to post comments
Rutgers has football delusions not fantasy. We had one good season and everyone went nuts. I went to a real football school for my undergrad (University of Florida...Go Gators!), and trust me, Rutgers is nowhere near that. So...why are we spending millions to make a better stadium and pay a coach when we don't have the money to pay for copying exams or phone lines?
I think the University of Chicago has done ok after canceling their football program...if by OK you mean a Boatload of Noble Prizes.
BTW - I'm thinking that if your negative Rutgers articles get picked up by The New York Times, the hush money, I mean, the tuition funding, might go up substantially.
Good Luck!
First post here... interesting comments.
I sorta feel your pain - Montana State is by no means a super-expensive school, but I recall upon my first visit to Bozeman everyone complaining about the new Football Stadium overhaul, and the concomitant tuition hike (and afterwards, the football team still sucked).
Just a couple months ago they revealed a HUGE expansion plan for our stadium - only six years after the previous - and I can't imagine what they'll do to the tuition.
Meanwhile, 500 lbs of asbestos were only removed from our earth sciences building this spring, we have black mold in the basement, and the concrete in parts of the building disintegrates when you touch it (not to mention a host of other problems).
Whats more... many of the players on our crappy football teams (and other teams) don't pay tuition at all... Our team sucked before I came to MT, they've sucked since I've been there, and they continue to suck (oh, ya, and deal meth, coke, rape 11 year olds, and kill people - not kidding), and in all likelihood, will continue to suck. *PHEW*
First: The NCAA gets banned from all institutions of higher learning.
Second: The NFL --- CFL in Canada --- takes on college teams as farm teams. With the proviso that team members must be enrolled students with a C average or better.
Third: All team members are on salary. In addition, all team members may accept gratuities. Every college team shall abide by NFL labor agreements.
Fourth; No student athlete may be called up until he has graduated. He does not graduate, and with grade of C or better, he cannot play on a major league NFL team.
Fifth: No college or university may have a football team unless an NFL team agrees to adopt that team as one of their farm clubs.
That's my proposal, and I am making it in large part to cause trouble.
Brian, didn't you get the happy email from McCormick reassuring all of us that the $102 million football stadium won't cut into academic funding and will pay for itself? We can trust him on this, because he took the time to write us all an email about it. ;) Obviously if you don't support the Rutgers football team, other football teams will kick our asses. Oh, what, that happens anyway? Then we obviously need that new stadium, to make our team better!
I'm on board with you for this one (and for every other Rutgers rant, really). I'm getting tired of hearing from McCormick about how things are rosy and great when one semester for me costs twice what an entire full-time year cost me back in Canada. I'm tired of a building in which the third floor is crumbling as you walk across it, about having heat in the summer and air-conditioning in the winter. I love my department and my program, but the administration of this university needs to get its head out of its collective ass. What is supposed to make Rutgers great is its world class ACADEMIC programs and research, not its mediocre, run-of-the-mill university football team. Post secondary institutions should not be about sports; we have minor leagues and farm teams for that. We have universities for learning. Rutgers won't ever have the football team that Notre Dame has, and its time McCormick stopped wishing we did and focused on our school's actual strengths.