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Journalism students expose athletics subsidies for investigative reporting class

The UO administration and foundation do a much better job of hiding their jock subsidies than UC does. The story in the Cincinatti CityBeat is here:

Robin Hood in Reverse

How universities force working-class students to pay thousands of dollars in hidden fees to athletic departments awash in red ink:

This story was written and reported by an investigative reporting class at the University of Cincinnati. Reporting by Morgan Batanian, Katie Coburn, Fernanda Crescente, Taylor Jackson, Tyler Kuhnash and Camri Nelson. Research contributed by Taylor Hayden, Talis Linauts, Kayleigh Murch, Matt Nichols, Malia Pitts and Lauren Smith.

Kevin Leugers pays the University of Cincinnati to provide him with a quality education.

The second-year student majoring in marketing and philosophy had no idea officials had quietly funneled tens of millions of dollars from students to the athletic department in recent years to cover the difference between revenue and expenses.

“It seems to be a corruption of education, in all honesty,” says Leugers, a University Honors Program student and Kolodzik Business Scholar. “Athletics is being given priority over education, over the professors, over the students. I just think that’s wrong.”

… [Board of Trustees Chair Thomas Hum] says sports are “a good investment for the university as a whole” and that the board decided every dollar given to the athletic department was money well spent.

“There has been a decision that whatever that investment number is that it is a positive investment for the university,” he says. “I don’t view it as a concern.”

The investment certainly brought a high return in 2014 to some UC coaches, particularly compared to the university’s 334 student-athletes. The university provided the students with $5.99 million in scholarship aid, less than 11 percent of the $55.4 million in athletic expenditures, according to UC’s NCAA report.

That same year, UC paid a dozen coaches on the football and men’s basketball teams more than $10.5 million, 19 percent of total spending. At the top was Tommy Tuberville, UC’s head football coach, who received $3.8 million.

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3 Comments

  1. duckduckgo 05/07/2015

    The whole “good investment” argument is so poorly supported. At a subsidy of $1,000 per student, Akron could give a full scholarship of $10,000 (it’s in-state tuition) to 1,500 students. Give half to poor students and create a huge jump in diversity, make half merit based and create a huge jump in average GPA, see the rankings in US News shoot up which creates a virtuous cycle.

    Instead, they hope by increasing visibility they might see an increase in good students applying. Why speculate when you could directly bring 1,000 good students to campus with the same amount of money?

    • Admissions 05/13/2016

      It’s not just unsupported, it’s not true that students are coming here because of football. I don’t think Lilllis is lying though, I think he really believes the hype train. The facts are that the increased enrollment is coming here from China and California. The Chinese students don’t even know how football is played and the Californians come because they couldn’t afford or get accepted to the schools in Califorrnia. All the nonsense Lillis spouts and Schill parrots about how the academic side needs to model itself to the athletic side has no actual data supporting it.

  2. Kay 05/13/2016

    I’m disgusted yet slightly humbled you butchered our work yet still gave us credit- lol. Check the real story out at cityBeat.com ;) -Kayleigh Murch

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