Quote Originally Posted by Professor Chaos View Post
FWIW JMU, with their gargantuan athletic fees, has a tuition of $13,576 for in-state students and $30,790 out-of-state students.

https://www.jmu.edu/admissions/tuiti...larships.shtml

In the end it's po-tay-to/po-tah-to in regards to whether a school subsidizes it's athletic department with student fees or school funds.
It's all a dumb accounting game and which box gets checked.

UNI has a continual fight between athletics and academia over the 4 million dollars a year UNI gets from the university "general fund". The faculty scream about athletics using university funds to pay for athletics. The reality is that 4 million comes into the athletic department ledgers and goes directly back into the university ledgers as it's used for scholarships.

Every school, state, system, etc. plays the game differently. The state of Iowa requires UNI to "bill" the athletic department for athletic related aid. In turn the athletic department goes "Fine, we will use funds from the general fund for that because those are funds available.". The funds go directly back to the school.

Even better in the case of UNI they don't charge any other department for scholarships that way. Those scholarships just get lumped into the university operating costs. Only athletic scholarships are forced to be separate - but that's a whole different topic about the state of Iowa BOR doing everything they can to make UNI athletics life difficult. The business school isn't charged for scholarships. The school of education isn't charged for scholarships. The school of human services isn't charged the same way. Only athletics. Thus we have an extra 4 million put into our "school/institutional support" that isn't done so with any other program on campus and many other schools across the nation. Why athletics related aid is forced to be billed separately has never been answered. Technically it's school/government/state aid going to the athletic department, but it's a gigantic farce that it's forced to happen that way.

On top of that the "student athletic recreation fee" gets put entirely to the athletic department, yet only a fraction actually goes to athletics. That same fee is split between intramurals, the rec center/activity fee, and athletics and even the part that goes to athletics gives students free tickets to every athletic event. Also that fee hasn't been raised in almost 20 years and is something like $230 per semester.

It's all just stupid accounting games.