Realignment Series Part 1: The Student Fees Issue
The Most Wonderful Time of the Year: More Realignment Discussion!
Maybe we’ve just become to fanatical ourselves, but we’ve been going round and round here at JMUSB HQ the last few weeks with all of the conference realignment talks and our thoughts on JMU’s future place, or lack thereof, in college athletics. We may be wrong that you all care about this issue as much as we do, and it’s certainly possible that many JMU fans, at least those of our era, are still “casual” enough that all of this isn’t causing them heartburn. But one thing we are sure of is this issue is ready for a slow, somewhat detailed, hopefully somewhat objective, and certainly rational treatment. Our own shared Twitter account @JMUsportsblog, the writers that cover the program day-to-day, and the message boards are all too lurching and anxious and generally too minute-to-minute at times to really stop and cover all the angles that need mentioning when it comes to the stay-or-go debate in the CAA and FCS as a whole.
Over the next few weeks, or so long as Men’s Hoops gives us nothing but crap to write about and/or no new news is announced about JMU’s future, we’ll be coming back to certain issues surrounding the larger topic. Just to prove how serious we are about all the issues, we apologize in advance that we’re kicking off the series with one of the ultimate “inside baseball” subtopics that needs addressing, mainly so we can have something to reference back to when this issue inevitably surfaces in debate
A Brief Explanation of the Student Fees Issue
This is an admittedly non-expert report on the subject, but regardless of our individual and ever-evolving positions on moving up and leaving the CAA, one of the most frustrating items that needs correcting is when those, in this case usually those opposed to moving up, raise the issue of high student fees in opposition to the move. Yes, non-tuition student fees at JMU are among the highest in the nation and they would likely increase were JMU to move up. In large part, these student fees subsidize athletics,and yes, it’s incredibly valid to raise concerns over how athletics subsidies should compare to everything else on campus that requires financing from faculty salaries to study abroad programs to infrastructure improvements like IT or parking. But simply citing the national lists often published by a lazy media and outright opponents in commentary about the FCS/FBS issue is just crap.
Without wading too deep into the muddy waters of state law/higher ed transparency, those numbers mean NOTHING to a Virginia public school. If you’ll notice, there are a disproportionate number of Virginia schools on all of those metrics. The simple version is this: Virginia is one of the only states (Commonwealth actually) that has a law that actually prohibits burying or hiding the percentage of money paid by students for athletics in the tuition figure. Basically in most states a college or university can say “tuition is 25k” and you just have to pay it without actual knowledge that X dollars are subsidizing athletics. In Virginia, a school can only place that subsidy in the “student fees,” where it stands out clearly that much of that fee is actually subsidizing athletics. Only two things can be gleaned from this. First, Virginia seems to have taken a reasonable and responsible position on this matter. And second, even when you add that substantial student fee to the cost of tuition, most Virginia schools are still among the best bargains in the country, in particular James Madison as we all know. Oh yeah, and in many cases (definitely not all, but quite a few), there’s nothing “student” about who is paying the student fees.
As we move forward with this series, let’s all try to keep this in mind.
Lastly, please continue to check out this new blog specifically covering a team we can all be proud of, Kenny Brooks’ Women’s Hoops team, despite a tough loss to Liberty tonight. Just another great JMU fan taking it upon himself to fill a gap in coverage and we are grateful for that!
Good topic, and an interesting read.
It seems to me that college athletics are a critical part of the college experience. Having a football team and a nice stadium, for example, is one of the things that makes an awesome place like JMU different from some hack, bush-league school like Mary Washinton or George Mason.
Thant being said, if student fees subsidize it, we’d better WIN, and they need to keep student tickets free.
I’d be curious to see a breakdown, though, how the student fees are distributed across the athletic department. My hunch is that they don’t subsidize football, but other sports like field hockey and swimming. In that case I would actually still support the fees because I am essentially paying for JMU to go recruit more hot girls to attend our school.
I can’t find any breakdown of how the student fees are distributed across the athletic department. I did find data from the Dept of Education showing the revenue and expenses by team. The total athletic department had $34,595,223 worth of expenses. I don’t understand how JMU does the accounting, but they somehow the way that they allocate things has every single team with equal revenue and expenses. Then they have $14M worth of revenue and expenses that are not allocated to any particular team and just count at an athletic department level. The end result is everything nets to zero.
#corrections – First sentence, *too. Y’all need an editor? 😉
I wanted to pick up on a brief discussion that we had on twitter. While I find a FCS championship more riveting, there is a better chance of going to a FBS conference championship (if JMU makes the leap) – and that MAC championship game was a ton of fun. Bowl games are also very fun. The great thing about a bowl (as opposed to playoffs) is that you, as a fan, know that is the last game. In a playoff system, you wonder which game you should blow the money on to attend – there is no such element in a bowl game. Plus, 50% of teams participating in a bowl end their season on a high note; wherease, only one team ends on a high note after a playoff.
As a fan, I would love to be in the MAC. I think the question is whether JMU can bear the costs of a FBS team. It appears that most MAC football teams are just breaking even, which means that football is not funding other sports. I do not know how this compares to JMU’s current situation.