The unofficial online home for fans of the University of Cincinnati Bearcats. Part of Collegiate Sports Nation (CSN).

I think schools with large endowments will be less likely to lay off people, yes.

4% of UC's endowment is about $60 million. At least we know that piece of the budget is secure. But UC has a $1.3 billion budget.

UC will be this year hurt because of the hospital. Hospitals got killed as corona shut down all elective surgeries. At least UC was the first school to outsource its dorm revenue, so we won't get killed on that. And it's the low-cost option, so students won't leave to go somewhere cheaper. Private schools with hospitals and large dorm complexes will get killed this year.

Ah, okay I gotcha, and I'm guessing the BOT has some sort of control every few administrations as to how the endowment is to be utilized downstream?

(07-30-2020 11:56 AM)bearcatmill Wrote:  

(07-29-2020 06:46 AM)Bearcat 1985 Wrote:  

(07-29-2020 06:19 AM)Cattidude Wrote:  

(07-27-2020 10:12 AM)Bearcat 1985 Wrote:  

(07-27-2020 09:36 AM)OKIcat Wrote:  Well said. Bolded, this is a critical gateway for our institution and I believe is articulated as such in UC's current comprehensive campaign for private support. It's more achievable than AAU membership, which is more akin to getting voted into a country club.

Few of us here could provide the full financial support needed for that cancer project but for alumni and friends on Banter, participation by giving at any level is important. For Ohioans, that can be as simple as going online and ordering a UC license plate (I saw far too many for OSU this weekend visiting family in northeast OH). For others, a gift through the telefund or online for your college or alumni association or UCATS makes an impact. Large numbers of small gifts have been another avenue to empowering many of our major public research peers.

I won't dismiss AAU membership to that degree; that should always be the number one, long term institutional goal for UC. That being said, though, I've often said on here that UC was too far off in many of the hard and soft metrics to be a final candidate--not to mention that anyone with a knowledge of the situation knew that Utah was next public in. UC needs to really strengthen its core Arts & Sciences departments: not only stronger physics and chemistry but also stronger history and political science departments. Georgia Tech's admission was delayed for years, not because the AAU is a country club, but because they were viewed as too one-dimensional and found lacking in many of the soft metrics that, while not of primary importance, are absolutely considered in the overall package. Ono knew that, yet he kept tweeting that it was just around the corner. And when it wasn't and prominent political and business leaders called him on the carpet, he told them the absolute lie that OSU had lined up a Big Ten block to blackball UC, something that immediately got back to Columbus.

I think you see the positive change in the relationship with OSU under Pinto in the fact that the first Bearcat and Buckeye Day at the statehouse came about after Ono had hit the road. What will come of this more constructive relationship, I don't know. It, however, can't be worse than what Ono accomplished with his poke a stick in their eye approach.

I thought that the Bearcats and Buckeyes day at the statehouse started under Ono but I'm probably wrong. I didn't pay much attention to when it started. I was wondering if it was happening this year but obviously not now. I'm glad that the partnership has started though. I'd rather try to work with OSU than have them screwing us over like they were when Gordon Gee was there.

I am excited for the push for Comprehensive Cancer Center. Would be big for the university.

The first one was a couple of months after Ono left. It may have been planned in his last few months in office, but he was already on his way out the door, and I'm not sure that OSU would have agreed to partner with us on it or anything else had he been sticking around. "Multiple Flagships" was probably the most tone-deaf, ignorant of the history thing that Ono could have done. It set relations with OSU back years and alienated the other university Presidents who clearly recognized that Ono was really angling for co-flagships and just trying to use them as pawns, all the while its only accomplishment was in getting the Governor to go on record as saying it would never happen.

CCC is huge. What we have working against us is that Ohio already has two, but UC Med has definitely put itself in a position to be a serious and worthy candidate. Also, this is still the much more logical area for UC to put it efforts towards right now. And, if we get it, that's just one more box checked off towards AAU membership. Though I can't stress enough that UC needs to seriously strengthen the core Arts & Sciences to have a real shot down the road.

Not sure how much or little input Ono had on the Bearcat/buckeye day, at the statehouse. Alumni Advocacy group, at the time under Alex Coorey, put this together. Alex worked out of UC's Government Relations office in Columbus. Greg Vehr is ahead of this department. I believe both spearheaded the day in Columbus. Both are great to work with. Since Alex has moved onto other endeavors, I have not heard much from the advocacy group.

Bolded, I had the opportunity to participate and it was an outstanding event bringing Ohio's two largest research universities together to make our case for support with state legislators. As you indicated, Alex built the advocacy group under the able direction of Greg Vehr. It brought together alumni and leadership from both universities and President Pinto was actively involved that day in Columbus.

Just to update this a little, Greg Vehr is now in a leadership role at the Dragonfly Foundation here in Cincinnati, which provides support to pediatric cancer patients and their families. During his years at UC he was instrumental in building the brand and worked collaboratively in many areas across the University as the campus was rebuilt, academic ratings improved, and enrollment soared.

(07-30-2020 02:23 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  I think schools with large endowments will be less likely to lay off people, yes.

4% of UC's endowment is about $60 million. At least we know that piece of the budget is secure. But UC has a $1.3 billion budget.

UC will be this year hurt because of the hospital. Hospitals got killed as corona shut down all elective surgeries. At least UC was the first school to outsource its dorm revenue, so we won't get killed on that. And it's the low-cost option, so students won't leave to go somewhere cheaper. Private schools with hospitals and large dorm complexes will get killed this year.

Yep, by comparison, here are the endowments of other state institutions:

BGSU: $138M (Athletics Budget = $24.5M)
Kent State: $142M (Athletics Budget = $30.2M)
Akron: $221M (Athletics Budget = $37.3M)
Toledo: $482M (Athletics Budget = $35.5M)
Miami: $522M (Athletics Budget = $39.6M)
Ohio U: $569M (Athletics Budget = $34.7M)

Some schools are going to be in a world of hurt in short order because they are not insulated one bit from losses. Hell, Kent State is already significantl over-encumbered institutionally with their endowment over their operating budget of $647M. At least schools like Toledo, Miami, and OU are insulated on that side of things, as each is around a half billion and near their yearly operating budget for academic enterprises.

(07-30-2020 02:40 PM)Cataclysmo Wrote:  Ah, okay I gotcha, and I'm guessing the BOT has some sort of control every few administrations as to how the endowment is to be utilized downstream?

Ehhh...it's more of an understanding than a written out thing with most major gifts to endowed funds. While University Foundations can steward that money, at the end of the day, if the funds needs to be repurposed to ensure strong operation of the University, very few people will ever come after them for it. Being in a few of those discussions recently has opened my eyes to it...there is generally an operating endowed fund for major divisions/colleges at a University that normally just runs off of a 3-4% return (we're talking large amounts of money in the funds, so a return like that can fund full offices with staff/faculty), but they can be dipped into in greater amounts should the need arise and the returns don't cover the costs. It's not something that can turn into a regular occurrence my any means, but if it happens a year or two, Foundations generally anticipate situations where they're able to make more than a 3-4% return on funds in some years to cover an over-extension.

Endowed funds are built in-perpetuity, so if you have a $1M gift for something, a 4% return ($40,000) is expected to be there every year for the remainder of the existence of the University, and if need be, more money can be pulled out to float things in a crisis.

(07-30-2020 03:34 PM)BearcatMan Wrote:  

(07-30-2020 02:23 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  I think schools with large endowments will be less likely to lay off people, yes.

4% of UC's endowment is about $60 million. At least we know that piece of the budget is secure. But UC has a $1.3 billion budget.

UC will be this year hurt because of the hospital. Hospitals got killed as corona shut down all elective surgeries. At least UC was the first school to outsource its dorm revenue, so we won't get killed on that. And it's the low-cost option, so students won't leave to go somewhere cheaper. Private schools with hospitals and large dorm complexes will get killed this year.

Yep, by comparison, here are the endowments of other state institutions:

BGSU: $138M (Athletics Budget = $24.5M)
Kent State: $142M (Athletics Budget = $30.2M)
Akron: $221M (Athletics Budget = $37.3M)
Toledo: $482M (Athletics Budget = $35.5M)
Miami: $522M (Athletics Budget = $39.6M)
Ohio U: $569M (Athletics Budget = $34.7M)

Some schools are going to be in a world of hurt in short order because they are not insulated one bit from losses. Hell, Kent State is already significantl over-encumbered institutionally with their endowment over their operating budget of $647M. At least schools like Toledo, Miami, and OU are insulated on that side of things, as each is around a half billion and near their yearly operating budget for academic enterprises.

And you can reverse those numbers, multiply the athletic subsidy by 20 and get the equivalent endowment fund that the universities would need to have invested to cover the cost of keeping the AD afloat. Even in the case of Miami and OU (800M and 700M respectively), the athletic subsidy is significantly more than their entire endowment is returning annually.

I know that it's popular to toss around the marketing and "front porch" aspect of a money losing athletic department, but I'm just not seeing it. Take Miami for example. Miami is in a situation right now where 9 out of 10 Ohio kids admitted to both Miami and OSU (and who choose to attend one of the two) end up at OSU. What would be better for their student recruiting? The current situation or taking that $40M dollars every year and putting $5M into a world class recruiting outreach effort for in-state students while splitting the remaining $35M into merit and need-based scholarships for Ohio kids? Wash, rinse and repeat with OU who's seen its rankings in free fall for a decade and has been decisively passed by--in terms of both reputation, student demand and admissions selectivity--by UC as an undergraduate college.

(07-31-2020 08:45 AM)Bearcat 1985 Wrote:  

(07-30-2020 03:34 PM)BearcatMan Wrote:  

(07-30-2020 02:23 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  I think schools with large endowments will be less likely to lay off people, yes.

4% of UC's endowment is about $60 million. At least we know that piece of the budget is secure. But UC has a $1.3 billion budget.

UC will be this year hurt because of the hospital. Hospitals got killed as corona shut down all elective surgeries. At least UC was the first school to outsource its dorm revenue, so we won't get killed on that. And it's the low-cost option, so students won't leave to go somewhere cheaper. Private schools with hospitals and large dorm complexes will get killed this year.

Yep, by comparison, here are the endowments of other state institutions:

BGSU: $138M (Athletics Budget = $24.5M)
Kent State: $142M (Athletics Budget = $30.2M)
Akron: $221M (Athletics Budget = $37.3M)
Toledo: $482M (Athletics Budget = $35.5M)
Miami: $522M (Athletics Budget = $39.6M)
Ohio U: $569M (Athletics Budget = $34.7M)

Some schools are going to be in a world of hurt in short order because they are not insulated one bit from losses. Hell, Kent State is already significantl over-encumbered institutionally with their endowment over their operating budget of $647M. At least schools like Toledo, Miami, and OU are insulated on that side of things, as each is around a half billion and near their yearly operating budget for academic enterprises.

And you can reverse those numbers, multiply the athletic subsidy by 20 and get the equivalent endowment fund that the universities would need to have invested to cover the cost of keeping the AD afloat. Even in the case of Miami and OU (800M and 700M respectively), the athletic subsidy is significantly more than their entire endowment is returning annually.

I know that it's popular to toss around the marketing and "front porch" aspect of a money losing athletic department, but I'm just not seeing it. Take Miami for example. Miami is in a situation right now where 9 out of 10 Ohio kids admitted to both Miami and OSU (and who choose to attend one of the two) end up at OSU. What would be better for their student recruiting? The current situation or taking that $40M dollars every year and putting $5M into a world class recruiting outreach effort for in-state students while splitting the remaining $35M into merit and need-based scholarships for Ohio kids? Wash, rinse and repeat with OU who's seen its rankings in free fall for a decade and has been decisively passed by--in terms of both reputation, student demand and admissions selectivity--by UC as an undergraduate college.

Oh, you know by now through all of our conversations that I'm on the same page with you regarding the MAC and their athletics spending arguments RE: enrollment. I don't think 80% of kids going to Kent State, UT, BGSU, or Miami give a **** about athletics at all, and the other 20% are either the athletes themselves or students who probably still would go to those institutions if athletics didn't exist or were drastically reduced.

As I've said numerous times to colleagues up here, there's a reason why Grand Valley is the same size as most every MAC school, has nowhere near the budget issues we have, and exists just fine...do the math...

So where's the cutoff? Top half of AAC and MWC?

Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

(07-31-2020 09:00 AM)Cataclysmo Wrote:  So where's the cutoff? Top half of AAC and MWC?

Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

Yeah...that's probably right along with the Texas/Florida schools in the Sun Belt and CUSA, and honestly, a few of the AAC schools are on borrowed time, the positive is that they're in growing states with growing student populations so they can float a money-losing entity like an AD. Schools in the Midwest, with dwindling student populations, really can't afford to have big red numbers like that on a budget anymore. The whole enterprise in unsustainable for schools that don't see national recognition and an actual enrollment edge with athletics (as with 1985's Miami/UC comparison).

Another dumb question--colleges pay a fortune to advertise during games. Even simple ribbon board advertisements at the basketball and football games cost quite a bit of money. For nationally broadcast games, such as UC playing UCF or Memphis on ESPN, you have about 1.5-2 hours of straight "Cincinnati" broadcast to a couple hundred thousand/million people. What kinda studies are they doing to determine the financial equivalent that that type of exposure would warrant?

(07-31-2020 09:36 AM)Cataclysmo Wrote:  Another dumb question--colleges pay a fortune to advertise during games. Even simple ribbon board advertisements at the basketball and football games cost quite a bit of money. For nationally broadcast games, such as UC playing UCF or Memphis on ESPN, you have about 1.5-2 hours of straight "Cincinnati" broadcast to a couple hundred thousand/million people. What kinda studies are they doing to determine the financial equivalent that that type of exposure would warrant?

Thats more of an independent assessment than a wide-ranging study. I know only what we've done at my institution, and that's pretty much a decision factor assessment for students. Basically that amounts to a "Why did you come here?" "How did you hear about us?" type questionnaire. For a school like mine, nearly 65% of respondents listed their first factor at Scholarships and COA, with around 20% saying Academic Quality was their first factor, student environment (which included athletics in that assessment) was an average position of 5th, and virtually a non-factor in the top 3 for most students. Obviously that's a small sample (only two cohorts with a 60% response rate), but it does bear some fruit.

Yeah it's easy for me to say that athletics has a clear and tangible benefit to the broader University but the scientist in me would love to have more comprehensive analyses to throw some actual figures at people when the debate arises. Especially nowadays with Covid and some of the local professors growing restless...

Athletics is probably a big Draw factor for flagship state universities like OSU and Bama, but probably way way way down the list for the Mac schools just as BCM has stated.

I’d like to think that UC gets a little more draw from it, but I dunno. I came to UC for the pharmacy school. I considered OSU because of the Buckeyes. I only became a fan of UC athletics because I went there. The bball team was an added bonus for campus life and fball was nearly non existent at the time. Definitely did not go to UC because of their athletics.

(07-31-2020 10:14 AM)Cataclysmo Wrote:  Yeah it's easy for me to say that athletics has a clear and tangible benefit to the broader University but the scientist in me would love to have more comprehensive analyses to throw some actual figures at people when the debate arises. Especially nowadays with Covid and some of the local professors growing restless...

You have no idea man...I feel like most of my days have been spent working with some of our more...seasoned...faculty learn how to teach differently than they have been for the past 20-30 years.

(07-31-2020 11:12 AM)BearcatMan Wrote:  

(07-31-2020 10:14 AM)Cataclysmo Wrote:  Yeah it's easy for me to say that athletics has a clear and tangible benefit to the broader University but the scientist in me would love to have more comprehensive analyses to throw some actual figures at people when the debate arises. Especially nowadays with Covid and some of the local professors growing restless...

You have no idea man...I feel like most of my days have been spent working with some of our more...seasoned...faculty learn how to teach differently than they have been for the past 20-30 years.

Ha, my brother is a department chair at a southern University. He says getting his faculty to become facile in the virtual classroom model is like herding arthritic dinosaurs.

(07-31-2020 11:36 AM)Major ----de Coverley Wrote:  

(07-31-2020 11:12 AM)BearcatMan Wrote:  

(07-31-2020 10:14 AM)Cataclysmo Wrote:  Yeah it's easy for me to say that athletics has a clear and tangible benefit to the broader University but the scientist in me would love to have more comprehensive analyses to throw some actual figures at people when the debate arises. Especially nowadays with Covid and some of the local professors growing restless...

You have no idea man...I feel like most of my days have been spent working with some of our more...seasoned...faculty learn how to teach differently than they have been for the past 20-30 years.

Ha, my brother is a department chair at a southern University. He says getting his faculty to become facile in the virtual classroom model is like herding arthritic dinosaurs.

It has taken years off of my life, and in a College of Engineering you'd expect it to be better...no sir...

(07-31-2020 11:36 AM)Major ----de Coverley Wrote:  

(07-31-2020 11:12 AM)BearcatMan Wrote:  

(07-31-2020 10:14 AM)Cataclysmo Wrote:  Yeah it's easy for me to say that athletics has a clear and tangible benefit to the broader University but the scientist in me would love to have more comprehensive analyses to throw some actual figures at people when the debate arises. Especially nowadays with Covid and some of the local professors growing restless...

You have no idea man...I feel like most of my days have been spent working with some of our more...seasoned...faculty learn how to teach differently than they have been for the past 20-30 years.

Ha, my brother is a department chair at a southern University. He says getting his faculty to become facile in the virtual classroom model is like herding arthritic dinosaurs.

This is an issue in every profession. I have 7 people who report to me, and we have been and are working from home for the rest of the year (and probably indefinitely). Three of them have been struggling big time and I question whether two of them won’t just quit/retire.

(07-30-2020 01:28 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  

(07-30-2020 12:46 PM)Cataclysmo Wrote:  So I have a dumb question. The idea of an endowment is to provide long-term stability and a resovoir for future commitments and the prolonged success of a University, correct? And we also hear about how endowments help stabilize universities through economic fluctuations and thereby provide a relative stability in the short term. As far as I understand it (I don't, at all), endowments are somewhat of an abstract concept that ensures Universities utilize and maintain commitments from donors.

So my dumb question is--how much does UC's recent push for the billion-dollar endowment (now up to 1.5b) factor in to the current Covid predicament? BearcatMan has talked about how schools with larger endowments are, of course, better positioned to absorb the financial blows that will follow, but how, specifically, does the endowment that we have help?

I ask because there's growing concern amongst students about UC's handling of tuition and cost of attendance fees for this upcoming semester, as we talked about. I wouldn't expect UC to just drop tuition unilaterally and then cover the difference with their endowment (which would be tremendously expensive in it's own regard), but I'm confused as to what the point of an endowment is if not to help 1. Faculty maintain their salaries/positions and 2. Help students receive a fair and equitable education relative to costs.

Here's a simple example: Let's say that UC gets an average of $100 million in donations from alumni each year. What can they do with it?

Option 1: spend $100 million this year
Option 2: invest it and spend $4 million every year forever (average returns on endowments are 4%)

If you do option 2 for 25 years, you end up with $100 million every year in interest. Of course, in real life there's inflation and growth in donations, so it all ends up evening out in terms of real economic value.

There's two big advantages to choosing the endowment route:
1) Long-term budgetary certainty. Donations have big year-to-year swings. But investments in faculty (which is by far any university's biggest expense) are long-term and can't be reversed if donations are too low (like 2009 or 2020). If you spend donations as they come in, then during a recession you have to lower scholarship funds (the 2nd biggest expense) or lay off most of your secretaries and academic advisors (the 3rd biggest expense) and/or cut research to the bone and endanger long-term research projects.
2) Short-term budgetary discipline. If you have a big donation year, the administrators who are "up or out" types might waste it. I've seen this happen even with professors - a professor/center director at my last school took over the center's account which had several hundred thousand dollars in it that had been donated, and in just a few years he spent half of it on data he probably didn't need and the other half on lunches and conference travel, then he took another job.

The point of an endowment is to never touch the principle. If you're allowed to draw down the endowment for need-based scholarships during a depression, then you're also allowed to use it for pretty much anything the dean/president in charge of that particular endowment wants. That defeats the whole point of using the endowment to enforce budgetary discipline.

I've never actually worked at an endowment, but that's my understanding of it. Anyone else want to chip in?

Been lurking on this board for years - first time posting. Random question - is the 4% number you used based on UC's actual average return the past few years or just a guestimate?

If UC is really only doing 4%, that's terrible, especially given the size of the endowment. Over the past 10 years, colleges with large endowments (over $1bn) have returned 9.0% on average (target return is 7.2%). You want to fix the athletics budget (or many other things) - that's the easiest way to do it!

Improving from 4% to the average return of a billion dollar endowment would be nearly $75mm in extra returns annually.

https://www.nacubo.org/Press-Releases/20...rn-in-FY19

(07-31-2020 10:46 AM)Bearcatbdub Wrote:  Athletics is probably a big Draw factor for flagship state universities like OSU and Bama, but probably way way way down the list for the Mac schools just as BCM has stated.

I’d like to think that UC gets a little more draw from it, but I dunno. I came to UC for the pharmacy school. I considered OSU because of the Buckeyes. I only became a fan of UC athletics because I went there. The bball team was an added bonus for campus life and fball was nearly non existent at the time. Definitely did not go to UC because of their athletics.

I can't find any hard facts, just local observations.

I live almost 100 miles due north of Cincinnati. In 1984, almost 10% of my graduating class went to UC (almost all in engineering), but the years before and after were pretty slim. I did not even know UC had a basketball for football team at that time.

In the early 1990's, there was an uptick in area students going to UC, with the increase mostly in non-technology majors (business, etc). At the time people up here all knew about Bob Huggins and the UC basketball team. Few still knew UC had football.

When the football team hit big under Kelly (and remember sports coverage kept growing on cable TV as time went on), suddenly everyone knew about UC football (though most still thought about Huggins when they thought of UC basketball). There was a HUGE increase of students from up this way who started attending UC at this time.

Just my observation, but 100 miles from Cincinnati, UC's ability to be seen and considered for local students has been directly tied to athletics.

(07-31-2020 11:51 AM)CliftonAve Wrote:  This is an issue in every profession. I have 7 people who report to me, and we have been and are working from home for the rest of the year (and probably indefinitely). Three of them have been struggling big time and I question whether two of them won’t just quit/retire.

Oh yeah. I had professors that understood quantum mechanics better than anyone yet couldn't figure out how to turn the damn projector on

Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk