Quote Originally Posted by mainejeff View Post
Good grief.....what are you guys so bent out of shape over?

UNH - In-State tuition: $19,112 Out-of-State: $38,882

Maine - In-State tuition: $12,606. Out-of-State: $35,346

So you guys are telling me that students are subsidizing athletics at Maine and Maine taxpayers are not?
In a round about way yes, possibly. And you can't compare school to school necessarily, especially from different states. You have to compare two different scenarios at the same school. Costs in Maine are, or could be, very different than in Maine.

So looking just at Maine, if in state tuition is 12606 at Maine, and that same $23m used for athletics, or whatever it was, was instead used to lower tuition instead of athletics it might only be $12000 cost for tuition. And Maine would charge $606 in athletic fees to maintain the same funding levels. But since the state either designated it for athletics, or the school did, either way, the student pays the same regardless. That is just an example with notional figures for understanding the concept. Again, that assumes the $23M was earmarked for the school no matter what. The state and it's taxpayers spent the same, the students paid the same, and Maine gets to say it doesn't have any athletics fees simply because that money was spent on athletics versus possibly lowering other costs. I'm not saying they did it specifically for that reason, but in the end the result is the same. Get it. This is old school accounting 101. It's really not hard to see. It's the different "pot of money" scheme. In some cases business and government do execute this strategy for very specific political or financial reporting purposes.