{"id":5887,"date":"2013-09-12T06:53:59","date_gmt":"2013-09-12T10:53:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/?p=5887"},"modified":"2013-09-12T06:53:59","modified_gmt":"2013-09-12T10:53:59","slug":"guest-blogger-researching-student-fees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/?p=5887","title":{"rendered":"Guest Blogger: Researching Student Fees"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"jmu\"<\/a>Last weekend Chadwick Diamond came closest to predicting the winner and final score for JMU’s game. As a result, he gets to be our guest blogger. Here is his examination of the student fees issue. Take it away Chadwick.<\/em><\/p>\n

While I haven\u2019t done a full search, I feel safe to say I\u2019m in the minority of guest bloggers in that I’m a current student at Madison. Four weeks into my sophomore year, I can saw without a doubt that I will be a Duke for life. The one thing that has always bugged me though is student fees. Every student has to pay them, but does anybody really know what they go towards? Sports, libraries, on campus events are common answers, but for me that wasn\u2019t enough. The most intriguing aspect, unsurprisingly, was how much was given to sports.<\/p>\n

A simple google search for \u2018jmu athletic revenue\u2019 revealed this gem<\/a>.\u00a0On the fifth page is a line titled \u2018Student Fees\u2019. Sounds like what we\u2019re looking. Football: Four million. Okay a little high, but not terrible. Total: 27.3 million. What! Twenty thousand students at JMU, and thats comes out to a whopping 1365 dollars per person. Now, don\u2019t get me wrong, I love JMU and its sports, but I\u2019m not sure if I would say its worth nearly fourteen hundred a year.<\/p>\n

But wait. Maybe this amount is normal for schools to put on their students. As luck would have it USA Today put together a nice interactive table of the revenue and expenses of D-I schools from 2006 through 2011 here<\/a>.\u00a0Hey, you can even sort by total subsidy, which is just student fees plus \u2018school funds\u2019, which I\u2019m just gonna count as the same thing. And JMU clocks in at… number five. Woah, can\u2019t say I saw that coming. Playing around with the table some, I realized that Madison\u2019s athletics budget of 31 million is more than any team in the MAC or the Sunbelt, and is number three in the CAA. I would have thought FBS schools as whole, and ones with the higher profile football programs especially, would have had much higher student fees, but instead it seems that the opposite is true and high level FCS programs and low level FBS programs have the highest rates of student fees. It seems that as you go up the football ladder the programs generate more money and thus have to rely less on student fees.<\/p>\n

However, even within this framework Madison sticks out. Looking at the MAC, the average student fee was only 17.2 million. Now, this article is not supposed to focus on moving to the FBS, however comparisons must be made to understand how JMU has the fifth highest student fees in the nation among public schools. To get a broader view of revenue and expenses across the D-I landscape, I found a document published by the NCAA averaging a bunch of different athletic expenses and revenue sources<\/a>. The pages of most interest to me were 30 and 56. Here the NCAA divides revenue into four quadrants of expenses. JMU\u2019s generated revenue clocks in at 7.3 million. This is actually below the median for the upper quartile for FCS schools and about a million less than lower quartile FBS schools. What might be more interesting though is that in terms of the total revenue, including student fees, JMU is above the median for the lower quartile FBS schools.<\/p>\n

I think this is the root of the problem. JMU generates below average money, but spends above average money. So what are some possible solutions to fixing this and lowering student fees? Well, you can either spend less or make more. Spending less is clearly not in the books, just take a look at Bridgeforth, University Park, and Memorial Park. That means we must find a way to make more money. One possible solution to this is to increase ticket revenue. As it stands now, Madison is actually making 2.3 million a year while the average lower quartile FBS school only makes 1.5 million. However, I believe this is likely because the low end schools perform poorly in the FBS and fans don\u2019t come out, but JMU performs well in the FCS so fans do come out(would you rather watch a loss to Bowling Green or a win over Richmond?). As with most programs, the two revenue sports for college programs are football and men\u2019s basketball. Bridgeforth currently rakes in 1.9 million and is near capacity most games, so the only way to increase revenue there is raising ticket prices. This obviously will not make fans happy. The other option then is men\u2019s basketball.<\/p>\n

To be brutally honest, the convo center is terrible. There isn\u2019t a good student section, the announcement speakers are terrible, and most importantly it almost never fills up. This leaves a lot of room for improvement. Following the team\u2019s successful run in the postseason last year, I believe there is a good chance we will see more fans show up when we have games this year. The when is another problem. The out of conference schedule this season only includes two games at home, which limits the amount of income further.<\/p>\n

Another key source of revenue is alumni contributions. JMU does receive 2 million in donations, which is no small number and in line with similar programs. There is a slight problem with this though. Looking at a presentation put together by Taylor Schwalbach<\/a>, Assistant Director of Annual Giving, found here<\/a>\u00a0you can see that only 7% of JMU alumni donate to the University. Compare this to William and Mary at 23% and UVa at 22% there is certainly room for improvement. This is not to say that everyone reading this should break out the benjamins, it is simply a statement of fact and there are likely many underlying factors affecting this.<\/p>\n

One things many people point to as a source for more money is more tv money and conference payouts in the FBS. In researching this I found that to largely be incorrect. A table found here<\/a>\u00a0shows the payouts from television contracts in various conferences. As you can see, of the conferences Madison could reasonably get into, only CUSA offers anything close to a million per year. While I couldn\u2019t find details on the new CAA bargain, I imagine it is around 50 to 100 thousand per school. Another problem facing Madison that they are spending 5.8 million in principal and interest on various loans for athletic facilities in 2013 alone and some of these payments will continue till 2030. For camparison’s sake, UVA pays 8.4 million in loans this year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Back to the original question, how and why are student fee\u2019s so high. Well, I really don\u2019t have a concrete answer. Madison\u2019s current financial situation is a classic catch 22. In order to make more money, they must spend more money. In order to spend more money, they must make more money.<\/p>\n

For those of you that made it this far, thanks for reading! I hope this article was as interesting to read as it was for me to research. If I left something out on accident or you have any questions just post in the comments and I\u2019ll try and answer you.<\/p>\n