[Vision2020] UI Athletics Must Pay Its Fair Share

Fri Jan 2 11:26:27 PST 2009

Hi Chris,

If you had read the entire column, we did address (and have addressed 
over the years) bloated administration and since 1995 we have shown 
how much higher administrative pay has outstripped full professor 
pay--260 percent to 187 percent since 1982 with CPI at 210.

As a result of our efforts, we have kept administrative pay under 
control, rarely exceeding the average for faculty raises.  Even with 
a bargaining contract, however, we could not stop them from hiring 
new middle managers.

I agree with the post that argued that we can better use the 
scholarship money, half of which comes from general education funds, 
to attract minority students to campus.

The enrollment of young women has increased regardless of 
scholarships all over the nation, and what is imperative now is to 
somehow save a generation of young men who are losing out academically.

Thanks for the dialogue,

Nick Gier

At 03:11 PM 12/31/2008, you wrote:
>Nick,
>You are again attacking the wrong problem; the real problem is a 
>bloated administration that sucks the life out of the various 
>colleges and departments within the UI.  Since you have a long 
>history at the UI, why don't you propose that the administration 
>take a cleaver to itself and cut itself back to the size it had in 
>the early 1980's?  Remember back then that the University had 
>roughly 8000 or so students, overhead on research grants was 23%, 
>and colleges and departments did not pay any "fees" to the central 
>administration?  That should be the goal of your arguement, not 
>attacking the athletic department.  After all, without athletics, 
>racial diversity would be non-existent at the UI; and attempts to 
>maintain gender equality would probably slip away.
>
>I know that the move to the WAC has been a huge throne in your side; 
>however, there are far more females attending the UI with athletic 
>scholarships than in the Big Sky days.  Why do you and the 
>leadership of the union so despise athletic scholarships?   Why do 
>you fight so hard to destroy the one department at the UI that is 
>largely responsible for racial diversity?  So what if the football 
>team has had a poor record in the last few years; the upside is that 
>the UI has these athletes as students.  The NCAA stats clearly show 
>that the UI has far better students than most universities in the 
>WAC, enjoy that and build on that.   Look at the flip side at BSU, 
>sure they were 12-1 this season, but their football student athletes 
>obviously are not there for the education and they proudly admit 
>it.   If the Ada County dominated state legislature wants to keep 
>supporting BSU athletic greatness at the expense of football players, fine.
>
>Your cause, and the cause of the union, should be to force drastic 
>cuts within the central administration, that is where the problem 
>really exists.  Stop attacking the one department that is largely 
>responsible for the diverse student body the UI enjoys.
>
>Happy New Year,
>Chris
>
>
>On Tue, Dec 30, 2008 at 10:41 AM, 
><<mailto:nickgier at roadrunner.com>nickgier at roadrunner.com> wrote:
>Good Morning,
>
>This my radio commentary for Radio Free Moscow (KRFP 92.5 FM) for 
>tomorrow AM.  The UI budget office has been closed for the holidays, 
>so I still need to gather more data.  For example, I would like to 
>know the total number and amounts of the scholarship that UI 
>departments offer their students.
>
>Visionaries may be interested in "Back to the Big Sky," a column 
>that the UI union president and I did back in 2005.  It can be found 
>at 
><http://www.home.roadrunner.com/~nickgier/bigsky.htm>www.home.roadrunner.com/~nickgier/bigsky.htm.
>
>Happy New Year,
>
>Nick Gier
>
>This is Nick Gier, the Palouse Pundit and state faculty union 
>president, talking about the UI financial emergency and the athletic 
>department.
>
>At the December 16 Faculty Council meeting, UI Provost Doug Baker 
>was asked to defend the break that UI athletics receives on an 
>administrative fee that all department pay to the central 
>administration.  Baker's response was that our teams could not 
>possibly succeed without this favor.
>
>For years our departments have performed very well, far better than 
>men's football and basketball, all the while experiencing frequent 
>budget cuts and paying the full 8 percent fee on all external funds.
>
>UI athletics only pays 3 percent of its external funds to the 
>central administration. For FY2002 the athletics paid no 
>administrative fee at all, claiming that it had to reach gender 
>equity goals.  Many other departments could have presented equally 
>persuasive reasons why they too should be exempt.
>
>For example, auxiliary services and facilities management generate 
>lots of external funds, and they could very well argue that their 
>salaries, 19 percent of which are below the poverty level, should 
>rise before they are required to pay the administrative fee.
>
>In the spring of 2005 then President Tim White, even though a 
>faculty committee recommended a $300,000 cut for athletics, chose 
>instead to fire 27 staff employees in the physical plant.
>
>While most UI employees have gone without pay raises, the athletic 
>director enjoyed an 8 percent raise for FY09, and a salary line for 
>football coaches, who have lost a record number of football games, 
>also increased 8 percent.
>
>In a response to the December 16 Faculty Council discussion (The 
>Daily News, Dec. 17), the athletic department defended its low 
>administrative fee by saying that it returns $2.5 million back to 
>the university in "the form of tuition, fees, room and board for 
>scholarship students."  Many other departments, however, do the same 
>with their own scholarship funds.
>
>If the implication of this claim is that athletics makes money for 
>UI, then this is clearly false.  For FY09 the athletics department 
>estimated that it would take in $2.1 million dollars in student fees 
>in addition to a $3 million direct subsidy from the Legislature.
>
>A national study concluded that only nine athletic programs are able 
>to actually return money to their respective academic programs. 
>Contrary to conventional wisdom, winning athletic programs do not 
>increase alumni funding. As a Vice President at the University of 
>Notre Dame says: "There is no empirical evidence demonstrating a 
>correlation between athletic department achievement and alumni 
>fund-raising success."
>
>Winning football teams at Wisconsin, Michigan, UCLA, Texas, and 
>Washington correlate with a low ranking of 126, 128, 134, 136, and 
>144 respectively on a national alumni giving list. Coming from 
>Oregon State, President White once boasted about how much money its 
>winning football team brought in, but in FY05 the OSU athletic 
>department had a $4 million deficit.
>
>In the fall of 2005 the Faculty Council turned down a faculty union 
>request for a four-step phase out of the $3 million subsidy for 
>athletics.  For most of the 1980s there was no such subsidy and the 
>Vandals won five Big Sky championships.
>
>The union's goal this time is much more modest: a simple request 
>that athletics pay its fair share of the administrative fee. 
>University Budget Committee member Jim Murphy agrees: "If my 
>department in has to give 8 percent, then everybody else should pay 
>8 percent too."
>
>
>
>
>
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"Truth is the summit of being; justice is the application of it to 
human affairs."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Abstract truth has no value unless it incarnates in human beings who 
represent it, by proving their readiness to die for it."
  --Mohandas Gandhi

"Modern physics has taught us that the nature of any system cannot be 
discovered by dividing it into its component parts and studying each 
part by itself. . . .We must keep our attention fixed on the whole 
and on the interconnection between the parts. The same is true of our 
intellectual life. It is impossible to make a clear cut between 
science, religion, and art. The whole is never equal simply to the 
sum of its various parts." --Max Planck

Nicholas F. Gier
Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy, University of Idaho
1037 Colt Rd., Moscow, ID 83843
http://www.home.roadrunner.com/~nickgier/home.htm
208-882-9212/FAX 885-8950
President, Idaho Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO
http://www.roadrunner.com/~nickgier/ift.htm

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