Captain Bearcat
All-American in Everything
Posts: 9,504
Joined: Jun 2010
Reputation: 768
I Root For: UC
Location: IL & Cincinnati, USA
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RE: Athletic Department COVID-19 Hit List: Growing Longer
(09-11-2020 09:11 AM)BearcatMan Wrote: (09-10-2020 05:28 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote: (09-09-2020 02:01 PM)BearcatMan Wrote: (09-09-2020 11:46 AM)Captain Bearcat Wrote: (09-09-2020 11:00 AM)BearcatMan Wrote: You've clearly never worked in higher ed. At the moment, I'm essentially pulling three separate full time positions (teaching 12 credit hours along with research as a junior faculty, advising roughly 400 students on all manner of academic affairs and co-op/professional processes, and managing all external engagement for the College where I'm employed). If you think Universities are adding jobs for the hell of it, you're clearly out of touch...and most of those added jobs are done so through grants and gifts, not operational funds, anyways.
Just to frame something in mind so you understand why tuition is ACTUALLY going up, play along with this. Adjusting for inflation, public institutions in Ohio are receiving roughly 27 cents on the dollar versus the state support they received in 1980. The only place to recoup that is from their "customers" (ie. the students)...as would be the case in any industry. This loss in state support is 100% tied to the consistent cuts of corporate taxes and general education funding cuts over the last 3 decades...and it isn't stopping any time soon, something that was clearly indicated by the Lt. Gov's suggestion of cutting 20% of the state share of instruction this year despite not being willing to pull from the rainy day fun DURING A PANDEMIC, which was luckily moved back to only a 5% cut.
I love what I do, and I'd never have it any other way...but all you desktop lackeys who sit around thinking higher education is a cakewalk don't actually understand anything about the landscape, and it's hilarious to hear you try to self-rationalize an idea that makes no sense in reality. The primary source of bloat at Universities is in their athletics departments, and this is coming from a former College athlete who had his team disbanded this summer. My current institution runs a $322M Budget on the Academic arm of the nearly 20,000 student institution (we also have a hospital that doubles that number). At the moment, nearly 11% of that budget goes to an athletic department with nearly 120 staff members that only makes $7M/year in operating revenue without the support of student fees, that's in comparison to my own College which sees only 14% of that budget will making money to the tune of nearly $5M/year BACK to the University with only 103 employees (faculty and staff included) after that roughly $40M operating budget is covered through tuition credits, research expenditures, and developed gifts/corporate sponsorships. If you want a place to cut the cost of education, athletics is where it's at, and that pains me to say it as a huge college sports fan...but some schools just shouldn't be doing what they're doing.
If we're using the Private industry model as you state, wouldn't you expect a company to reallocate resources away from a division that is losing nearly 10% of the company's revenue every year? You and I both know the answer there.
I am a professor.
About 1/3 of professors in my discipline have worked outside of academia, including myself. Until 2020, every single professor I've ever heard complain about the workload has come from the other 2/3.
2020 is special because for most of us, it's the first time there's ever been substantial changes in the expectations placed upon us.
Yep...same here, worked for a structural engineering firm for 5 years before moving into higher education. I have no issue with the work I've got on me, I love being busy...but there's a whole hell of a lot of people who make statements about us collecting checks and not doing a damn thing who stare at their computers all day on spreadsheets acting like they're busy .
Hah.
One correction to your data though:
Yes, it's true that corporate tax rates have been reduced since 1980. And overall state tax revenues are up big time. In 1980, Ohio's total revenue was 4.3% of GDP. In 2020, it's 5.4%
Much of this is because federal grants went from 0.6% to 1.6% of GDP over that time.
But it's also because total tax revenue went up from 3.3% of GDP in 1980 to 3.6% in 2020. Corporate taxes were never a large part of the budget - they were only 10% of state revenues in 1980.
Since 1980, Sales tax is up 18% as a % of GDP and personal income tax is up 30%. Minor taxes (primarily alcohol, cigarette, and insurance industry taxes) are down 16% as a % of GDP.
While you're completely correct that they were never a strong part of the overall revenue...they were specifically tied to educational distributions. In the 80's, Ohio said the lottery was a better way to fund education and dropped the corporate tax rate tied to "the promotion of an educated workforce" and moved that percentage of funding to lottery revenues, which were considerably lower. They knew what they were doing
Interesting.
But Ohio isn't the only state that's had reduced higher ed funding. Of the 29 largest states, only 5 did not have drops in education funding as a % of GDP from 1980 to 2020 (GA, FL, NC, TN, MD. I didn't check the small states, or Missouri which for some reason I couldn't find their 1980 GDP).
The average large/midsized state went from 0.59% of GDP to higher ed in 1980 to to 0.44% in 2020. Ohio went from 0.57% to 0.34%.
The 41% drop is large. But Ohio's drop of 0.23% of GDP is only the 11th largest drop out of the 29 largest states. Midwestern states in particular had large reductions: Michigan (0.53% of GDP), Iowa (0.45%) Wisconsin (0.34%), Pennsylvania (0.32%), and Kentucky (0.29%) were the worst 5.
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