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Athletic department depends on student fee money

NoÃlle Bernard, Editorial Editor

(ERIN KILLINGER | The Miami Student)

This year, Miami University raked in nearly $29 million to benefit athletics, facilities, health services and student organizations through general fee charges listed obscurely in every student's tuition bill.

Inside the roughly $12,189 in-state students paid for the 2010- 2011 tuition charge or the $26,988 for out-of-state lies a $1,774 general fee.

Since the state does not allow a university to allocate tuition toward non-educational services or buildings, the general fee serves as a way to raise money for areas the university believes enhances education.

"The biggest portion is what we call tuition which is broken up into two pieces," said Vice President of Finance and Business Services David Creamer. "The biggest would be what we call the instructional fee and that's the part that relates most closely to your academic programs. The second part of that tuition is the general fee."

The general fee has steadily risen over the last four years averaging an increase of about $37 each year.

Ultimately, in-state students put forth about 15 percent of their tuition to pay for general fees, while out-of-state students pay about 6.5 percent of their tuition.

The fee specifically accounts for the expenditures of Intercollegiate Athletics, the Recreational Sports Center, Millett Assembly Hall, the Shriver Center, the Goggin Ice Center, parking, student facilities, Student Health Services, student organizations, Student Affairs Council, lecture and artists and musical organizations. These expenses are found within each student's tuition, therefore meaning that each student is paying to benefits of the allocated services.

"It's really the other things that broaden the kind of experience you have here but it's not as closely tied to the educational experience," Creamer said.

"The belief is that it is enhancing your educational experience but its not directly connected to that degree you pursue."

Students have been paying roughly the same amount on the Goggin Ice Arena since 2003, according to Associate Athletic Director Steve Cady. The fee, which accounts for $156 of each student's payment, pays for the upkeep of the building. While donations helped to build Goggin, the building still derives some of its funding from students.

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"Where some of the money is coming from fundraising, some of the money was determined that it would come from (the general fee)," Creamer said. "The same thing will be eventually true for the Armstrong Student Center but not until it opens. Unfortunately, these decisions get made by students back in a point of time but they obligate students for years because the cost will go on for 25 or 30 years."

On the same token, John D. Millett Hall was built in 1968 and students are still paying virtually the same amount of fees for this building, 43 years later. Creamer also attributes this steady cost to the upkeep of Millett.

Within the general fee, the largest expenditures come from intercollegiate athletics, the Recreational Sports Center and Goggin Ice Arena. These services and facilities require the most money from the general fee because of their large size and direct connection to majority of students, Creamer said.

"The law requires anything that's a dedicated student facility, not instructional or research in nature, that it must be separated out and treated under the general fee," Creamer said. "The state actually doesn't provide any support for those particular facilities."

Intercollegiate athletics sucks up over half of the general fee with each student paying $909 this year.

According to Jason Lener, deputy director for intercollegiate athletics, the money from the general fee is used to fuel the department in almost all areas.

"The general fee goes to helping us run our athletic department," Lener said. "Now we generate a little more than $5 million of our own revenue through ticket sales, fundraising, corporate sponsorships and grants that we get from the NCAA for just having division one athletics and parking. The rest of our department is funded through the general fee."

Yet, Miami's high numbers stand out in comparison to other NCAA Division I schools that use general fees to support athletics.

"The reason why our number is so high if you compare us to some of the other schools in our conference is because we have one of the lower enrollments," Lener said.

"If we had double the enrollment that number would be half. So that's part of the reason why the general fee is so high for athletics per student because we have less enrollment than our competitors."

Miami is a member of the Mid-American Conference (MAC) and has the lowest enrollment numbers compared to fellow university competitors.

In fall 2010, Miami had enrollment of 16,359 students whereas, the highest enrolled MAC member, Central Michigan, had 28,389 student enrolled for the 2010-2011 academic year.  

As enrollment determines the intercollegiate athletics high numbers, increased tuition is the main culprit. In 2009-2010, the board of trustees voted to raise tuition by 3.3 percent; however, they delayed the increase until the 2010-2011 academic year. This increase directly affects the rising cost for intercollegiate athletics because of athletic scholarships.

"We pay for scholarships, so imagine that tuition goes up 6 percent, well now the cost of our giving a scholarship went up 6 percent," Lener said. "So what the university has done is anytime that they increase tuition they have given us that increase in general fees to cover that increase in tuition. So that's why you see the radical change in the general fee."

Tuition directly impacts the athletic department because one of the expenses is paying for scholarships for athletes. The department pays for the entire tuition including room and board for some athletes. But, if tuition rises they face a challenge to support their scholarship giving and their need for support for the general fee must increase.

"Imagine this, let's just say that our enrollment was 10,000 people and then the next year enrollment drops down to 9,000," Lener said. "But the general fee to athletics has to go up because we increased tuition to make up for that loss of enrollment. Well now the per student general fee amount will automatically go up. The amount per student goes way up because there is so many less students."

But while tuition hasn't gone down over the last few years at Miami, last year Miami gained over 200 students.

According to Lener, the intercollegiate athletics department wants to lower the costs needed from the general fee but the demands of NCAA requirements and the size of the department relies on the fee to generate the necessary revenues.

"It's our goal for it to level out," Lener said. "If we had our way we would generate more money internally, that we wouldn't have to have so much support. I think that we do a very good job with managing the resources that we're given and we're very cognizant of the fact that we get a lot of support from the university and the student fee."

As tuition continues to increase and enrollment numbers remain unpredictable, current students are confronted with the facts of the university's faltering economic state. If the past is any indication, as costs for athletics continue to rise, the university will again turn to students for financial support.


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