(02-27-2017 05:01 PM)billybobby777 Wrote: But, getting a subsidy from your state is different that pulling money out of an schools endowment or general fund. That's my point.
It is, of course, more complex than that, since not all of the formal budget cost of an athletic department is actually additional cost to the University. When the athletic department is charged the fees and tuition cost of an athletic scholarship, some of that may be "hard costs" ~ hiring additional instructors, buying textbooks, buying lab supplies, etc. ~ but much will be "soft costs", which include allocating fixed overheads to the students enrolled where at the margin an extra student does not actually increase the fixed cost, and also include allocating additional students to sections that are not at their enrollment cap.
And in the end, there is a bit of a semantic distinction without much difference when some subsidy comes from "the general fund" in one school and some subsidy comes from "student activity fees" in another school ... at Kent State, I would not be surprised that the activity fee system is
de facto part of the process of encouraging students to go to the branch campuses at the network in their first two years. Whether you call the money tuition or a general fee or a dedicated activities fee does not change the impact on the student wallet.
Now, you can complain that, to the extent that there is a genuine, hard cost subsidy, the students are covering the marketing costs of the University. But, on the other hand, in a market economy, the customer
always covering the marketing costs of a good or service. If I buy a Coke or a Pepsi instead of Generic Cola at the supermarket, part of what I am paying is the massive advertising and marketing budgets of CokeInc and PepsiCo.