(12-16-2014 02:08 PM)wavefan12 Wrote:  

(12-16-2014 01:55 PM)dezagcoog Wrote:  

(12-16-2014 01:37 PM)SublimeKnight Wrote:  

(12-16-2014 01:20 PM)upstater1 Wrote:  I don't think they devote 50% of their fungible budget to marketing, no.

There's $200m for the teaching of classes and the running of the administration. A $20m cut of that is really going to hurt you--and your reputation, I might add. Since you're not going to be able to hire anything but part-timers to teach.

Besides, UCF is competing for instate dollars at public institutions against UF, USF, Florida St, FGCU, etc. The question becomes, can it raise its profile enough to attract the students electing to go to UF or FSU? And how does it do nit? Improved academics? Football?

This isn't a classic case of marketing nationally to brand yourself. Big state institutions don't do that. They serve an instate constituency.

Students elect to go to San Diego over UCLA for a variety of reasons. In California, both are considered essentially equal, whereas nationally, UCLA has a bigger profile because of sports.

Right now, UCF is already the most applied to university in FL.
When you look at why someone would apply at FSU (2nd most applied to in FL) over UCF: Older, better perceived academics in some major, location, etc... Athletics is really the only thing that money can buy to help improve.

Let's be honest. If UCF hired away the best professors from Stanford, MIT, and Harvard they'd still be rated around where they are today academically. The name of the game in the higher education industry is image. You can only improve image with marketing and athletics is the best marketing tool in the industry.

That's not true. Rice is consistently considered the best University in Texas and their sports/football sucks compared to UT, TAMU, etc.(caveat: exception in Baseball)

Rice has 4k students, it's unfair to compare it to the two big state schools. In fact, I know kids who choose UT over Rice and I am sure athletics plays a role in that decision.

Well but the point is that you don't have to put athletics over education. It depends on the school. If you make that your point I agree, but it goes both ways then. Cause schools like UAB likely should have never gone to 1A. I think that no one really needs to defend what their school is doing because we really need to understand each school is different. Baylor has never had the same P5 success but they're also considered better than UT.