I’d say they should cut the athletic scholarships first.
The only non-need based scholarships that public institutions give to OOS students should be revenue generating – ie: allowing them to give MORE need based aid to in state kids. Personally, I also think that voters need to let legislatures know that education is a priority.
@suzyQ7, at the B10 schools (most of them, at least), sports pay for themselves and are even net revenue generators. If you get rid of athletic scholarships (and essentially shut down those sports programs), you would actually have less money to spend on fin aid for poor kids (or the library, or whatever).
I believe that the numbers shown in @bclintonk post doses not contain athletic scholarships. If you look at common data set questions H2H-H2Q it shows the split.
@Eeyore123, ah, you’re right.
Still, UIUC, UW-Madison, and UMTC don’t exactly give a lot of merit scholarships.
@twoinanddone why do you state that professors make more now? Are you adjusting for inflation?
I grew up in a small town with a university. Many of my friends’ fathers were professors. They made about $20k, about the same as those of us with fathers in at the insurance company, probably a little more than business owners. The university professors are now among the highest paid in town. At the time, one of those fathers was the president of the college and of course he made more than average, but not hundreds of thousands more than the professors. There weren’t nearly as many administrators at universities in the 70’s and 80’s as there are now.
With all due respect to the quality of reporting on the Daily Illini sports page, that’s not what UIUC’s Common Data Set says. According to the most recent CDS (2016-2017), 190 student-athletes received athletic scholarships at an average of $35,895. That totals $6.8 million. As between the Daily Illini and the CDS, I think I’ll trust the CDS.
But the CDS (Line HsA) also says UIUC awarded non-need based scholarships to 3,724 undergraduates without financial need, excluding athletic scholarships. The average value of these awards was $5,240. That totals $19.5 million.
These figures are difficult to reconcile with Line H1 of the CDS which says the total amount of non-need-based aid (excluding non-need-based aid that was used to meet need) was $15.3 million. Even if all the athletes had need and every penny of athletic scholarships went to meet that need, $19.5 million (from Line H2A) is still more than $15.3 million (Line H1). So something’s amiss here.
In any event, UIUC spent either $15.3 million or $19.5 million on scholarships for non-athletes who had no financial need, at a time they were gapping students with need by about 1/3 of their demonstrated need. I won’t say that’s unconscionable because I don’t know what kinds of endowment constraints they were under—maybe they just had no other legal options. But it’s troubling. And it’s no wonder so many Illinois residents are now attending OOS flagships which in many cases they find more affordable than UIUC.
Seems like the only way to judge athletic financial support is by knowing how much comes out of athletic revenue.
NM
Athletic scholarships do not meet need, and in fact taking an athletic scholarship means the student can’t take a need based award from the school. The student athlete could have a Pell grant and I don’t know how those would be reported on the CDS. The 6 headcount sports would all be full scholarships, but most athletic scholarships are much less than 1/2 tuition.
Thirty years ago colleges did not need Wi-Fi, they didn’t need a website, they didn’t need an IT infrastructure. All applications could be read by the head of admissions and one or two assistants. Administrative staff sizes have gone up, but in general those administrators serve a function.