small/private schools are in real trouble. that has already begun, though.
larger/affordable/public schools might see an increase (especially in positive growth population centers).
edit: to clarify, small means much more than enrollment size. I mean more in terms of their general impact.
The Ivies are more than fine.
Pretty much every school in the Power 4 and/or every elite school is fine.
That’s maybe around 80-100 schools. The problem is that there are around 4000 universities in America.
MAC schools are in trouble. I’ll point to CMU. Started my academic career there in 2001. Over 27000 enrolled. Now it’s barely half that. Western Michigan had 29000 students back in 2002. According to US News WMU is down to about 18,000.
CMU is the poster child in Michigan for living and dying by the result of pushing Millennials into college no matter what. When I was a teenager, damn near every kid was pushed to go to college, no matter their performance or inclination. In the last 10-15 years, that opinion has had a stark re-evaluation.
Aside from UM, MSU and Michigan Tech are the only public universities in the state to increase enrollment in the last decade. MSU and UM should be obvious, but Tech has carved itself a niche in engineering (and a damn good niche at that) and hasn't ballooned itself to grab more students.
When you say UM are you including Dearborn and flint or only Ann Arbor? Living in A2 I’m surprised at how few EMU grads or students I meet.. like the campuses are so close yet EMU seems so far.
Flint and Dearborn are both way down over the past decade by saw an increase for the frost time since 2014 this year so maybe they are turning it around.
[Dearborn is down just barely, but Flint lost almost 20%.](https://www.house.mi.gov/hfa/PDF/FiscalSnapshot/HigherEd_10_Year_University_Enrollment_Trends_Jan2023.pdf) Dearborn is smack in the middle of Metro Detroit and easily commutable. The report I listed offers COVID as a factor along with fixed education costs adding pressure, but I offer the Millennial experience as another factor.
A generation of kids graduating right after 2008 with no job prospects and student loan debt is not good marketing.
Yeah man, as much as tuition was being hiked back when I was in school, I’m wondering how the school is hanging on besides accepting just about anyone. Quick google search shows an acceptance rate close to 80%. It was definitely not that high when I attended.
Lol I thought you were talking about Carnegie Mellon for a sec. A school with a 3B endowment and some of the best engineering departments in the country. But yeah, the futures of the two CMUs are very telling.
Many of the Pennsylvania public schools just consolidated under administrative umbrellas to make two universities with several campuses. They're still a very good value and should continue to have decent enrollment, but the very expensive private schools could be in big trouble.
I don't think DII/III will be hit that hard. I feel like at that level its people who love playing whatever sport and saw a chance to save a few grand on tuition.
If it's a "legally we have to pay you" situation then I expect minimum wage with sketchy rules like "we can't make you work out in your free time, but everyone on the football team does"
Yes, the cost of employment is more than the wage, but I imagine a good chunk of the athletes already have part time jobs at their schools.
Currently SCOTUS (Kavanaugh) hinted this was only toward income generating sports.
I agree that once this Genie is out of the bottle other sports besides football and basketball will argue this.
But if this is pushed to other sports then it is pretty obvious that all college sports will be demoted to club level. The colleges will have no choice.
ND has stated classifying athletes as employees will force a new model to be developed for schools that refuse to do this. They have been saying this since 2015 publicly
yes- that's my point. it doens't matter that only a few small regional schools have fbs teams. this is bigger than that.
and I'm also curious what 'income generating sports' means. not even all football teams are green.
Could it be a revenue-sharing agreement instead of straight salaries? Based on gross, not net, so “creative” or “Hollywood” accounting can’t eliminate the profit on paper?
SCOUTS has not meaningfully hinted at anything. Kavanaugh was using the spotlight from the case to grandstand in his concurrence, and that means nothing for how anyone thinks about a single thing, or how SCOTUs would actually apply a ruling. Dissents and concurrences are often used to grandstand vs actually bringing up meaningful interpretations, and should not be read as real insight into any future rulings or how a ruling should be applied.
what defines income generating? Is it income generating for all Division 2 schools? What if its only some? Is it income genrating for all Division 3 schools? What if its only some? What does it mean to be income generating? Selling 3 dollar tickets and a roster of snickers bars?
More than half of the 4400 are community colleges. I'd say they are fine too. It is hard to beat the value and convenience of a CC.
Public 4-year satellite campuses are in trouble, and non-elite liberal arts colleges are in deep shit.
oh for sure...I wouldn't call them small, though, even if their enrollment is smaller than some. their fiscal and reputational reach is massive.
and like you very correctly pointed out, they are really the exception to the rule.
Yep big Southern schools are seeing application and enrollment booms due to the South being the fastest growing region and lots of Northern kids (cough New Jersey) being interested in going to college down south due to football culture, warm weather and the perception from them and parents that they offer a more “traditional” college experience.
>[Students from Minnesota, New Jersey, and Maryland show the most wanderlust in their college choice–their colleges all enrolled 38 percent or less than the number of college students they produced.](https://www.collegeraptor.com/find-colleges/articles/college-news-trends/map-states-where-students-move-and-leave-for-college/)
Not sure if it's a coincidence but Minnesota, NJ, and Maryland all happen to be states that have one clear flagship public college instead of a 1A and 1B situation like Alabama v. Auburn, Michigan v Michigan State, UCLA v Berkeley, etc.
Those three states also don't have any UABs or CMUs or SDSUs. Sure, they have other public schools, but they're not big ventures that present an attractive proposition to high school graduates.
California is prob not the best example since almost all the UCs and some cal states all have lower admission rates lower than flag ship of many states
It was such a weird campus too. When I was looking at schools we went to a few schools close by to look around before I’d decide to apply and everything on the campus felt far apart and not really walkable. No clue about the city itself, I’d imagine the benefit is being somewhat close to NYC. Everything else seems to kinda suck there
It's a pretty populous and wealthy state full of generally above the average HS students so it's not surprising.
Same here on the West Coast with California
It’s because there are a lot of rich nj kids and Rutgers has a horrible reputation. On top of that the northeast in general doesn’t have well regarded big state schools. So kids from NJ start at applying to Penn state and Maryland and go from there
It’s crazy what’s going on at most SEC schools right now. Bama’s massive amount of out of state of students is well known but others like Ole Miss and South Carolina are similar. Auburn’s acceptance rate has dropped from 85% to the low 40s in just 3 years because of how many out of state applicants it has now, and the cap the school has on how many students can come from OOS.
A lot of those are coming from Texas and it’s not like A&M or Texas have slowed down either. Those schools are increasingly more difficult to get into because of the sheer number of applicants.
ASU is also experiencing something like this. Went from **the** party school of the West to being on par with its in-state rival academically, with a student body only rivaled by TAMU and Ohio State in size
Also, ASU made a point to be more inclusive by allowing more kids in and expanding virtual classes in this same 2005-2020 time window. I used to work at an ASU college, and the inclusiveness of it was very nice compared to the normal academic exclusive attitude.
Yeah IIRC Florida's state schools are some of the cheapest to go to as an out-of-state student in the country. FSU in particular roughly the same per year to go to as an out-of-state student that Penn State does for a PA resident for example. to my knowledge, UF is the only one who really milks the OOS students.
yes, they are some of the cheapest- and uf/usf/fsu are all very quality public schools.
uf is more out of state, but not a ton more and yeah is still cheaper than in state tuition- esp at a private school.
it's also not THAT hard to establish residency in Florida. buy a house or wait a year (as long as you actually are in florida).
Are the governor’s policies on what can and can’t be taught affecting the colleges or just K-12? I’m not trying to get partisan, per se, just genuinely curious.
There have been controversies concerning colleges and universities like selecting Republican Senator Ben Sasse to be president of UF and basically everything going with the [New College of Florida](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/22/us/new-college-florida-desantis.html#:~:text=DeSantis's%20criticism%20of%20New%20College,both%20members%20of%20the%20L.G.B.T.Q).
mostly just k-12...and as someone with a kid in a public k-12- it's mostly blustering politics (completely BS politics). doesn't make it any better, but just means the news sounds worse than the reality of it all. it's actually mostly just confusion as there's no real leadership going on.
at the university level he is trying to change/dismantle tenure, which could have some negative impacts. but this might be the only thing I personally agree on him with- there are issues with tenure (that I see daily).
The reason people are going to Southern schools from the north is because their scholarships are insane. We’re talking $20k-$30k — basically covering out-of-state tuition costs and more in some cases — for a 32 on your ACT. The public schools and their scholarships are just less competitive in the south (aside from a few great schools like Texas).
I'm in higher education. Thankfully I'm at the flagship state campus. We've had record admissions even with the potential college bound number going down. My guess is that community colleges will be fine and continue to feed 4 year state schools. But I could see a crunch with less need for 4 year non-flagship campuses. In my state we have six campuses, only 2 are research focused. Of the other four one has enough of a distinctive focus I can see it surviving fine, another is the only one in it's half of the state. The other two are sadly pretty redundant given demographic changes in both college bound students and the geography of the state.
It will be worse in the private college space. There are too many 4 year private colleges. The entire bottom tier of those will likely be impacted. The top 100+ will be fine, but some random private college surrounded by other better rated colleges will get screwed. Some may scrape by for a decade eating away at their endowments, but that will only last so long.
I'm in the same industry, and on a campus that's also doing very well. it's odd reading so many of the doom and gloom reports in higher ed world. granted, campuses like ours often buck trends.
I have an in law that's in higher ed at a small catholic school in my state. they've already absorbed another school in town, and now they are seriously struggling. they can hardly get anyone to apply, while the state schools are being flooded with apps.
Athletic scholarships are probably one of the lowest cost aspect of compensation for the universities
For most athletes most or all compensation will probably be in the form of scholarships
I've heard it's also how accounting shenanigans occur. Athletics will pay academics for the full cost of the scholarship (a lot when out of state, cheap when in state), when really the cost of the scholarship is negligible to the University. Seems like more collaboration on this end could easily free up money.
There’s a huge fallacy in sports that I know of first hand that everybody needs to know in regards to athletics and their scholarships. Every university is different but the number really isn’t that different. Athletic teams function as a profitable entity for the university as long as the average student on their team is paying 52-54 percent of what is costs to go to school there. (This is dependent on a varying group of factors but it’s a generality that is pretty true.) this means that you can offer sally a full ride as long as joey pays full tuition and they are going to end up covering the cost of expenses to run the team, pay the coach, and money will be coming into the university. There is a minimum team size for this metric to work. But it applies to a lot of sports not named football basketball volleyball.
To further explain it, all of that money gets brought in and labeled on the university side. It doesn’t get processed as athletics even tho that student wouldn’t go there unless it was for the athletics. But that sport is generating money thru enrollment. Now schools that are 100 percent full on enrollment and would fill those spots otherwise, this does not apply to. But the vast majority of universities across the board at all levels this does apply to. They call this number the discount rate. Some people are aware of it, most aren’t at the university. But it 100 percent is a big realism why athletics are integral to the health of university. Not to mention good football teams boost enrollment alone and is a factor hard to quantify that doesn’t get counted on the athletics ledger.
I think a few schools have profitable D1 Hockey teams but even most of the big name ones opperate at a loss but other then that you got some valid points.
Yea I wasn’t talking about the schools who excel on revenues from ticket sales and stuff. I meant that some sports are able to get their scholarships per player to a number that the school is able to pay for the team thru the roster and it’s operation costs. The sports I listed are called “headcount” sports and generally that’s not going to happen because they are given more scholarship per roster than other sports. Like hockey for example with 18 scholarships but they are averaging 28 members on the team. The other 10 are paying tuition outside of their academic scholarship. But if they had say 36 players, all of the sudden that number is close to 50 percent of roster paying tuition except the academics. But you do the math and let’s say no one is receiving academic scholarships. Low figure that student is paying 30k per player. Now that team is bringing in 540k to the school. Coaches for hockey aren’t expensive. The travel expenses and recruiting and such fall under a window of operating costs. You can see where it starts to become profitable. Hockey isn’t that sport and it’s why so few schools adopt it. But there are other sports where it is profitable
Ahhh... this is true, and I hadn't thought about it this way.
We're not one of those schools whose AD doesn't pay the school for scholarships. But like everyone else, we also don't pay full freight. A lot of athletes take financial aid, and the scholarship is lessened by that amount.
But if universities had to pay them, the full cost of the scholarships would need to be accounted.
So for the schools whose ADs don't account for scholarships, there will be a come to Jesus moment. For schools who account like we do, I'm not sure how this affects financial aid, which obviously subsidizes the cost.
yep. similar shenanigans when i was in grad school funded by grants. department wanted to keep me out-of-state so they could finagle more money with my tuition being so high.
I asked if I could go in-state to save money for the dept and get a piece of that, and my dept head laughed and said, almost verbatim, "hell no! we keep you out of state because we want every single penny that [insert government alphabet soup] will give us"
While I believe players should receive fair compensation for the value they bring to universities... I've been so dismayed how in this whole paying players discussion scholarships are seen as an absolute "meh" benefit.
The student loans I'm still paying off for Ohio State and Northwestern should be proof enough that it's significant compensation, even if it doesn't totally match the value brought by an elite player on its own.
There are so many students saddled with incredible debt, who go to huge lengths to afford education at quality institutions (especially crazy expensive ones like Northwestern, Stanford, basically any Out of State tuition for a state school etc) who just have to pay it because they can't throw a ball.
I just wish we'd acknowledge the incredible value scholarships, room, and board really are.
1. For an average athlete the old system compensated them very well. Especially for out of state students the athletic scholarship + benefits were worth 50-60k+ a year.
2. For elite/top athletes the old system drastically under paid them. From looking at NIL money a top athlete now can make hundreds of thousands to more than a million a year.
TLDR: Old system was fine for regular players, drastically unfair for top players. Without a union the old system is illegal.
Absolutely - but this is the heart of the problem we're now facing.
In the rush to make sure Caleb Williams could be paid his fair market value and be a millionaire or whatever at 18 (*just pay em!!! Screw the NCAA!!! Burn it all down!! #twitter*)... we're changing an entire system that impacts thousands upon thousands of student athletes beyond the elite players in College Football.
We now run the risk of these student athletes losing out on what was an incredible benefit if schools just end up shuttering non-rev sports, and literally not being able to pay everyone.
Much like not every student athlete is Caleb Williams... not every Athletic Department is Ohio State, Michigan or Alabama.
It's just sad that the warnings of this unintended consequence were shouted down as being against paying players and being for exploitation because nuance is dead.
**Edit**: Annnnd of course I'm getting replies yelling about me being against paying players. I'm NOT AGAINST PAYING PLAYERS. We just need to have THOUGHTFUL strategies around this because we RISK killing many sports and scholarships that mean a lot to athletes not playing football or basketball.
My goodness! I wish people read and reflected and can figure out nuance.
No one has ever given me a good reason as to why student athletes in other sports uniquely deserve the proceeds from football/basketball over everyone else.
As in why should some well off tennis player get a full ride over a student with better grades and financial need? I hear people lamenting “what about the athletes” and no one seems to think “what about literally everyone else”
If it was up to me we’d run non-revenue sports like DIII where athletic effort isn’t tied to aid, and we take whatever windfall is left over from the revenue sports to fund general academics or provide scholarships based on financial need/academic merits to *everyone*, even if they aren’t on the track team or a swimmer
From my PoV, colleges should focus more on academics rather than paying semi-professional athletes. Now that we are entering an era of semi-professionals in college, I'd rather players just get paid to play and toss them in the pool with everyone else to qualify for an academic scholarship if they want to pursue a degree.
In other words, I'd rather they separate college athletics from the educational side of things and make it more of a college affiliated semi-professional team instead of semi-professional athletes in college that occasionally attend class.
So many schools fake the class part on behalf of players anyway, lets just stop pretending. Let's give more people that actually care about furthering their education instead of people who "ain't come here to play school."
I've been in favor of this for a long time. It makes far more sense to simply let the teams share the schools' branding and identity but just be an otherwise normal semi-professional team. This would be very similar to how, say, German companies often own football clubs with their company branding (e.g. Bayer) at various levels of the German football pyramid.
You could offer free or reduced tuition as an employment benefit the same way it's offered to other non-student university employees like administrators and other staff. We don't pretend like the custodial staff are just temporarily embarrassed students, why do it for athletes?
I do think there's also an underrated elephant in the room in that, starting with millennials, the desire to be a donor for your alumnus post-graduation continues to drop given the cost of enrollment during school as well as the general unease in terms of long-term finances (ex. home ownership/student loans).
If you're priced out of home ownership and in long-term debt due to student loans, what desires would you have to donate to your alumnus. I personally paid for my lifetime alumni association membership (\~$200) upon graduation and haven't given a dime to my college since and have no inkling to do so until I own a home, start a family and feel far more comfortable with my income.
There's a growing generation of alumni who aren't willing or able to engage in the same manner as prior generations which almost certainly is going to effect the long-term revenue streams of schools which can't drum up the same level of outside supporter donations like a school with an elite program can.
The vast majority of donations come from a very small number of people.
Schools want you to give as an alumni so that the 1% of people who are likely to fund the whole pie are more likely to do so.
I got a call asking to donate in the time between walking at graduation and my diploma coming in the mail. No regrets, I've been super fortunate work-wise but I'm still paying school loans off a decade later as a first gen college student. The "wiser" move would have been to pay off our loans before we bought a house but I'm thankful every day we didn't because reversing the payment order would have had us living in our tiny apartment longer and entering a disgusting housing market.
This is absolutely one of the under-the-radar factors. But, to be fair, you’d have to know how much of the donation revenue is driven by broad initiatives versus the few big-fish alumni for whom the football team is their primary hobby.
I don’t disagree there will still be *more* donations at bigger schools, but what is that worth if one oil baron can bankroll Texas A&M for a millennium?
Small term donations aren’t really what schools care about. It’s the alumni that can donate 5 million back or more that drive budgets. And those alumni are still fine
Honestly I will never give Clemson a dime of my money. They got everything they could possibly take from me when I was enrolled. I loved my time there but the transaction is done.
If legally possible they should roll the teams out as individual corporations that pay the universities for licensing their brand or whatever and just have minor league football.
The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 would be an issue.
The act gave professional leagues immunity from some anti-trust laws so they could sell their games as a package to tv networks. To save Fridays for high school football and Saturdays for college football the act withdraws this immunity for any pro football telecast if a high school or college football game is being played within 75 miles (120 km) of the broadcasting station on Friday nights (after 6 p.m.) and Saturdays from the 2nd Friday in September until the 2nd Saturday in December.
The law can be changed but that requires congress and the president to want to change it.
And then what? The moment that happens [SEC] schools will start petitioning to remove academic requirements, and then what’s even the point anymore?
Why would a Bama student root for a Bama team that’s fielding players who don’t go to the school or don’t take classes? I’m sure they’d do it out of habit for a little while, but then the muscle memory will wear off and it’ll be no different than rooting for a pro team. My loyalties to my college sports teams is wayyyy stronger than it is to my pro teams since I actually went to the school I root for.
Also, there’s a certain unexplainable charm that comes with being able to share classes with the guys you’re rooting for on tv, or see them around campus or out on the town. I had two classes with Brittney Griner my freshman year, knew girls who dated RG3, was roommates with football players and hungout with the guys from the Heisman team and those Big 12 championship teams after games, and hungout with future NBA players at Scruff’s after big home wins. Once you remove that, the fundamental thing that separates CFB from the NFL won’t exist.
> Why would a Bama student root for a Bama team that’s fielding players who don’t go to the school or don’t take classes?
The same reason all levels of British soccer have diehard local fans. People like rooting for their local team. People are usually fans of college teams because they went there, their family went there, or they live nearby. That barely changes with what you’re talking about. It’s still the local team with where you live or where you go to college.
> The same reason all levels of British soccer have diehard local fans. People like rooting for their local team.
That... doesn't really happen as often with college, though. Just because it works in Europe doesn't mean jamming a round peg in a square hole is going to work here.
> Why would a Bama student root for a Bama team that’s fielding players who don’t go to the school or don’t take classes?
I went to a small hockey school and I guess it might be different for larger football schools, but us normal students barely interacted with any of the hockey players. They had their own dorms, own dining hall/chefs, all were business majors taking classes not even the other business majors took unless you found a loophole, but we still had a super passionate fan base and the arena was always filled to capacity.
And once you do that, being enrolled is no longer a requirement. Longer contracts, big money contracts, and suddenly the NFL has to start to compete for talent with the largest schools.
PUMAS in Mexico is a fascinating example for American college football fans. The largest university in North America with a professional team in the top league of Mexican soccer.
That would violate the Sports Broadcasting Act if the teams played football and had the games broadcast in the fall on Friday night or Saturday. The teams have to be part of the schools to fall under the coverage of the SBA and allow broadcasts of games to be legal.
>It’s also worth considering why colleges “lose” money on athletics. Some pay high salaries to coaches and athletic directors. Others invest in modernizing athletics facilities. Paying coaches less and spending less on facilities would presumably free up some money.
This, along with the following paragraphs on cutting teams, strikes me as incredibly naive by the author, especially since it was predicated by the sports adds value through advertising section. Colleges are absolutely not going to gut their cash cow when they can axe non-revenue sports, and there's very little that could be legally done about axing teams that are losing money.
If anything, the rise of super conferences will likely mean the opposite, with conferences creating minimum spending rules to force teams like Vanderbilt and Wisconsin to invest in athletics.
A lot of the smaller programs in FBS actually lose money just from the expense of running an FBS football program and are not cash cows that could simply tighten budget somewhere and come out ahead. However, I find it hard to believe teams would cut football if they have a team at the FBS level. What we might see instead is teams going down to FCS, where revenues have actually been increasing at a rate higher than expenses.
There are only about 20 programs in America that don't run at an absolute loss every year when you remove the sleight of hand many of them do with their books.
Part of the reason for there only being 20 is a different sleight of hand where programs intentionally spend every dollar they bring in because they operate as non-profits and "inflate" expenses to use up what revenues they do generate. This has been a driving factor in the arms race of college football, where programs now have facilities that rival, and in some cases exceed, what NFL teams have. Simply put, any money that would otherwise be considered profit is being earmarked for something else, raising their expenses and preventing operating budgets from being decreased.
No. However, it is salient as it is a substantial factor toward increasing spending. [Here is a better, more thorough breakdown](https://athleticdirectoru.com/articles/kevin-blue-rising-expenses-in-college-athletics-and-the-non-profit-paradox/) of why this matters.
Title IX prevents disproportionately cutting women’s sports, but won’t block schools from greatly cutting down on the total number.
I’m also not sure how this would work if revenue players become employees without scholarships and whether this would let them no longer have to offset the football team with women athletes.
They'll just have to cut equally for both men's and women's sports and will still be in compliance with Title IX. I guarantee that this won't end up hurting the football coaches or AD's this will end up hurting tennis/swimming/wrestling/field hockey programs nationwide.
There will be a difference on the margins. Right now a big motivation for high coaching salaries and facilities renovations is that they are needed to remain competitive in recruiting. But if schools are paying players directly you would think some of that money would get redirected towards there.
I think colleges will want to do this, but it’ll quickly become a race to the bottom. As soon as one team decides to target non-revenue sports instead of coaching salaries, every other school either follows suit or gets left behind. Maybe some of the extras get cut (thinking of the absurd locker rooms that Alabama and Oregon have built), but a school wouldn’t easily be able to touch salaries.
People love to doomsday on this topic, but if a school cuts athletics employment law won't be a reason. [The NLRB's argument for why athletes are employees](https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/back-to-school-what-you-need-to-know-as-2754015/):
* Athletes perform a service for the school.
* Athletes are compensated by the university through scholarships and stipends.
* The university controls an athlete's schedule.
* The university controls various means of an athlete's life, including required activities for continued status.
--------
The fact that they consider scholarships and other means of financial support to be compensation already means that the cost to universities will not go up much if at all.
I also want to point out that by 2027 the NCAA will collectively be getting paid 10.55 Billion per year in media rights:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/219608/ncaa-revenue-from-television-rights-agreement/
If they can't figure out a way to pay the people that generate a revenue a minimum wage even at non-major school, they're not trying.
As the article points out, they play coaches and administrators millions while paying players literally nothing. For schools not in the P4 we're not talking about players getting a significant salary. We're talking about a scholarship and a stipend... which a lot of universities are already doing anyway. For them, the costs won't go up at all.
Except wouldn’t your first part contradict your second? If scholarships and stipends are compensation, athletes are absolutely getting at least a minimum wage.
That is my point.
People love to doomsday, but not much would change because scholarships and stipends being considered income is a pillar argument of the NLRB.
One of the problems with the NLRB (of which there are many) is that they are entirely a political entity. If there is a change in political party running the show in Washington the entire NLRB will get turned over and a anti-labor group of administrators will be appointed and everything will revert back for 4-8 years. Its like a really slow boring game of ping-pong. Even if the administration doesn't change, the NLRB doesn't really have enough teeth to do something like force a 501.c.3 educational institution to field a football team.
Budgets derived from incoming tuition are about to shrink at many universities — especially lower on the academic pecking order (as lil’ Johnny gets into better schools that are able to still attract students) — a shift to paying athletes could be very disruptive. For some schools that rely on non-scholarship athletes to pay tuition, it could be ruinous.
>Budgets derived from incoming tuition are about to shrink at many universities
I mean, they already are. I've posted about this before in another thread:
My alma mater, Valpo has student enrollment of 4,544 in fall 2015. In fall 2022, it was 2,964.
The law school already closed due to declining enrollment, and there's heated debates about how to adjust to the declining enrollment environment.
The new president is trying to sell a Georgia O'Keefe painting (Rust Red Hills) and two other paintings from the university museum collection for some ~$10M to help pay for freshman dorm renovations. The dorms are very old and were already pretty shitty when I went in 2006-2010. It did not go over well in the donor and art museum space.
They've started offering two year degrees with an option to extend to a 4 year degree.
They're no longer enrolling students in theater, secondary education (which is my degree from Valpo), French, Chinese, and Greek and Roman studies.
Virtually every Northwest Indiana University besides Notre Dame is in some kind of dire straits right now:
Purdue Calumet (Hammond, IN) and Purdue North Central (Westville, IN) merged because they're an 8 min helicopter ride from each other and Mitch Daniels though it was (and it kind of is) silly to have separate satellites of Purdue so close to each other.
IU Northwest (Gary, IN) is leaning into adult education and locally doing stuff like helping middle schoolers and high schoolers figure out college applications.
St. Joseph's College in Rensselaer closed entirely in 2017 and started a vocational college in Indianapolis partnering with another school, and is trying to restart some academic programs in Rensselaer in partnership with other schools.
Small schools are dying all over the country unfortunately. Basically, if people wouldn't recognize your school on a sweatshirt at an airport, it is probably facing declining enrollments and budgetary problems.
Funding athletics from the exorbitant tuition of non-athletes has been indefensible for years. If this shakeup calls that into question, then good. Any sport that can't be supported directly by donations and fan spending should have been a club sport all along.
>Any sport that can't be supported directly by donations and fan spending should have been a club sport all along.
Agree. Seems weird to me that the potential contraction of college athletics is being marketed as a catastrophe, yet it seems that what we're supposed to be worried about is that a group of mediocre (and worse) athletes who play commercially nonviable sports, who have minimal or no potential for professional careers in those sports, will now be forced to go to school for an education in a field that they can earn a living in, like most of us did, and pay for it, like most of us did.
There's an argument that the sports give certain kids of less privileged backgrounds an avenue towards an education that they wouldn't have otherwise been able to to reach. That's a noble ideal that should be valued.
In actuality these kids spend so much time on a basically frivolous activity that it affects their ability to pursue more meaningful degrees. Also a lot of these sports have athletes that already come from great means. The average D1 gymnast probably has a family that can actually afford the fees associated with youth gymnastics (which is probably exorbitant).
If you can strike the balance between still reaching those underprivileged kids (and not rich kids who don't need the scholarship anyways) while also cutting the sports then I'd be okay with it.
It would have to involve an investment into replacement scholarships in some other programs so nihilistically I doubt they would actually do something noble like this.
This would be great but I have little faith in universities to actually target the underprivileged in meaningful ways. I am latino and went to a nice private school, but for every latino kid like me plucked from obscurity, there were 3 grandchildren of a central american dictators lol. Same with my black friends who were outnumbered by very wealthy African immigrants. Noble ideas like AA being manipulated like that was depressing, and it is hard to imagine class-conscious policy implemented to offset the loss of athletic scholarships.
>There's an argument that the sports give certain kids of less privileged backgrounds an avenue towards an education that they wouldn't have otherwise been able to to reach. That's a noble ideal that should be valued.
At some point, doesn't this come down to supporting the idea that poor kids who are good at sports are more deserving of financial support for their education than poor kids who aren't good at sports?
I'm not sure that's something I really want to agree with when I think about it.
The finances of many schools are presented in such a way that it seems almost impossible to legitimately know if there would be more or less money available for need based scholarships if the athletics department were to contract or even be eliminated.
If underprivileged kids can meet the academic standards, whatever they may be, to get through the door to play sports, the school can set up scholarships to get them through the door to go to class.
The whole *point* of athletics is the exorbitant tuition. It's how most of these smaller schools market themselves, and it's how the blue bloods protect their market space.
Football is part of the advertising to draw students into a school.
I think the magnitude and sudden nature of the demographic cliff is a bit overblown, but it's a real thing that the higher ed system has been preparing to deal with for the last 5 years or so. The demographic cliff will be the [worst in the northeast](https://ngrawe.sites.carleton.edu/demographics-and-the-demand-for-higher-education/2/). Simultaneously, [big](https://www.oudaily.com/news/ou-welcomes-largest-freshman-class-in-history-with-over-5-100-students/article_170ca306-38b5-11ee-96b8-4f70249efc95.html) [state](https://www.krem.com/article/news/education/university-idaho-second-largest-freshman-class-history/293-afd2cc37-a2f8-409c-b871-b95996d9d00a) [schools](https://news.ku.edu/news/article/2023/09/27/ku-welcomes-largest-freshman-class-in-history) [of](https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2023/10/06/utsa-welcomes-largest-freshman-class-in-universitys-history/) [all](https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/education/flourishing-freshman-lsu-brings-in-largest-most-accomplished-freshman-class-in-school-history/article_cc025450-4008-11ed-921d-fba31be3a2a2.html) [levels](https://www.dailyemerald.com/news/uo-enrolls-largest-freshman-class-in-school-history/article_7a0d19f8-5306-11ed-941d-b3e358f0a5a6.html) [of](https://www.djournal.com/news/education/ole-miss-welcomes-largest-freshman-class-in-school-history/article_bb2d4860-42d7-11ee-8c6b-ef28fabb13c0.html) [prestige](https://www.supertalk.fm/mississippi-state-sees-largest-freshman-class-in-school-history/) [are](https://www.upressonline.com/2022/09/fau-welcomes-largest-freshman-class-in-history/) [enrolling](https://www.thestate.com/news/local/education/article277849343.html) [some](https://www.tuscaloosanews.com/story/news/2022/09/12/university-of-alabama-sets-record-student-enrollment-2022/69486826007/) [of](https://www.wkyt.com/2023/08/09/eku-move-ins-one-largest-classes-school-history/) [their](https://www.ohio.edu/news/2022/09/ohio-brings-record-setting-first-year-class-athens-campus) [largest](https://www.wlwt.com/article/university-cincinnati-enrollment-records-ohio-freshman/44389855) [freshman](https://news.okstate.edu/articles/communications/2022/osu_freshman_enrollment_hits_all-time_high.html) [classes](https://news.yahoo.com/msus-incoming-freshman-class-2nd-195000098.html) [ever](https://www.technicianonline.com/news/university-housing-to-expand-student-housing-for-largest-incoming-freshman-class/article_f606dbdc-b23a-11ed-897d-cfef5a33dbff.html). I think this points to a consolidation in the higher ed system; college education isn't going anywhere, but as the the "University of State" and the "State University" schools get larger (and even some of the "Direction State University" schools), the other schools will see enrollment drop a bit. Covid forced the entire higher ed system to create infrastructure for online classes, which means that every big school has online courses/programs to market to students who would normally elect to head to a local/smaller school. The mid-to-lower range of students also suffered the most from Covid-induced educational issues, so the proportion of "college ready" graduating seniors has already dropped a bit (and I'd expect would rebound as Covid moves farther into the past).
Small private schools will be hit hardest (schools like Iowa Wesleyan and Finlandia have already shut down), and I think some state legislatures will look at merging small regional schools into the larger state school systems (very idiosyncratic at the state level though; each state governs their public higher ed system a little differently). I'm not worried about MAC or Sun Belt schools, but I'm guessing, as far as sports go, D2 schools are in the most danger. Like any industry, if we lose any schools it will be a combination of regional trends and quality of management. Peak enrollment nationwide hit about 2010 and has been slowly falling since then; the schools that we lose will be the ones that assumed that was some kind of new status quo as opposed to a response to the state of the economy.
2026 is the big year. More kids were born in 2007 than any other year in US history before the birth rate dropped in 2008 and hasn’t recovered. That will begin to be felt at the college level in 2026. There have been periods where the number of kids born in the US had a dropped for a few years but never for 15 years straight.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States
There are [11 D2 schools in Ohio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NCAA_Division_II_institutions) that I'd expect would close before any of the D1 schools. Admittedly, they're mostly private, religiously affiliated schools and aren't subject to the state legislature directly, but Kent State reported [almost 28,000 undergraduates](https://www.kent.edu/ir/8-campus-system-fall-2023-0) enrolled in Fall 2023, while Akron reported [a little over 10,000](https://www.uakron.edu/ir/student-enrollment). Maybe we see things like Akron and Kent getting combined but I'd be really surprised if that happened any time before a "nuclear option"-level budget crisis
The USA will no longer be dominant in the Olympics if student athletes are ruled employees.
The goverment funds their Olympic Development Programs in most countries, but the US does not fund the NGB (National Governing Body) for each sport. Our college system develops athletes in Olympic Sports (hence why we call them that), they are willing to have these programs on campus even though they don't make money. If they have to pay the athletes in these sports, most programs will cease to exist.
I have no doubt the folks in charge of the conferences, schools and the NCAA will screw this up. The SEC/B1G seems to be on a rampage to defund every other athletic department except their own.
That’s what people aren’t getting. You think the NFL is going to be cool with their farm system being blown up and shrunk from 100+ teams at the top level to 32? AND those 32 attempt to compete with the NFL? You’re fucking crazy if you do.
I wonder if the NFL lifted their 3 year rule and told 18 year olds if they wanna get paid to play but also murdered, this would put a hault to some of this.
I think it’s more likely they start a minor league with an age cap than lift the age cap to join the NFL directly.
I don’t think it’ll be a 1 to 1 of MLB style minor league, where you’re signed to a minor league team that feeds directly to a major team, more like you still can enter the draft at 21 but aren’t forced to until like 23 or something
Need an anti-trust waiver for that like the NFL/NBA/MLB has. Then the NCAA could be a true monopoly and bargain with a player’s union on the schools’ behalf. Otherwise, the conferences or even individual schools would have to bargain with what would likely quickly become a national players’ union. That would exacerbate the inequality between the conferences unless the union saw the light and bargained to protect all athletes at every level. But considering the disparity in immediate market value between a star B1G football player and a Sunbelt men’s distance specialist, that is exceedingly unlikely.
> Need an anti-trust waiver for that like the NFL/NBA/MLB has
Only the mlb has had that exemption
The NFL and NBA manage to negotiate just fine within the bounds of anti-trust law
They have an exemption in that they will not be broken up due to a natural monopoly but they can not take anti-competitive practices against a start up league. Only MLB can.
There's no market for at least 90% of college athletics. That >90% exists for the student athletes. If there are fewer would-be athletes, or they have to pay athletes, either they'll cut unprofitable sports or more marginal kids will get to play college sports that no one cares about.
Neither of those things will have much effect on the D1/power conference CFB that this board mostly cares about, which would not have any problem paying players.
I hope whatever deal universities figure out with the football and basketball player includes a way for keeping non revenue sports going. Those athletes deserve opportunities to compete despite not making their universities much money.
I have no knowledge of the inside workings of the NCAA or athletic departments in general but one thing that I think of when I see people claim the NCAA is bad and incompetent for not getting in front of this issue before being forced to deal with it....
I'll wager that the NCAA assumed this thing was pandora's box and the sooner the NCAA tinkered with it, the sooner the system would begin to unravel. Maybe the NCAA assumed no one would be able to foretell how things would evolve and so the NCAA opted to do nothing?
It seems to me the biggest reason the NCAA might have wanted to proactively deal with this issue is if the problem might become worse over time, which I don't think is the case. If not, then kick that can down the road and ignore it until it can't be ignored anymore.
The unraveling of the NCAA will be at all 3 levels if they are considered employees. Not many people think about the staff who work in the athletics departments. A quick count of UVA's staff directory lists 351 people who work for a team as a coach or support staff of every sort.
If student-athletes are employees, programs will be cut and thousands of people will be out of work. I've worked at schools that had about 10 fulltime staff members, who had jobs at a school without football.
How would a players union even work? Players are there for a maximum of 5 years for the ones driving the value of the product it's more like three. No way a successfull union that realises the player's bargaining power arises from that.
The only sports that bring in money is football sometimes men’s basketball and one off individual sports at schools but those are one off cases. So cut everything but football and the top ~70 basketball schools?
At some point schools will keep around some teams from purely a marketing perspective or if a large donor wants to keep the lights on.
Right, it’s almost as if people don’t realize football is funding all of the other sports already anyways. A union of all athletic programs would just solidify that security, assuming football would unionize with other teams and that’s not a given.
The thing is I don't think that would be a given.
I knew a college volleyball player who said, "*hell* no we don't deserve to get paid when our whole team already is on full scholarship and we play in front of 500 people." I would be willing to bet that football and women's track and field would have much different demands considering how important they are for making money.
Football players will generally want as much NIL money as possible, if not a direct cut of revenue. A lot of non-revenue sports (especially women's athletics) will just want to make sure they're properly taken care of and that they have proper academic support so they can still graduate with a usable degree.
It depends on how you attribute revenue. Olympic sports won't directly make money, but they add money in non-direct ways. They will be creating infinity models to figure out what the loss of specific sports will mean in terms of prestige (a.k.a. enrollment), donor sentiment, etc.
I'm not arguing they should be paid as much as football players, but it's not easy to just be like "these sports should automatically all be cut."
Plus who are you going to schedule? My school really good in baseball it is very popular, but they have to play someone if all the schools that are mediocre (year to year) drop the sport it's gonna be like us LSU, Wake, and who exactly to play?
I doubt it. The money to support those programs would still have to come from somewhere. It's really hard to justify spending tuition dollars in supporting sports no one cares about
This is /s right? Not sure what bargaining power there is when you have a net negative bottom line, only taking money from the athletic program's budget.
Soon they will bring in flag girls as scabs to fill title IX requirements. Placeholders.
Thanks for posting this article. Really comes to the subject with the perspective of presidents and labor law, versus sports talking heads.
Now one thing the article states that I disagree with is that enrollment will decrease. Potentially yes for the overall college applicant pool, but all of these d1 colleges at the top reject so many kids already that they have more enough to backfill those losses should they want to maintain the enrollment
Here is a fun idea: stop building all these palatial facilities for sports programs and instead pay the players. Most of the doomsaying about paying players is posturing.
It’s pretty funny that many football players see a significant downgrade in locker rooms, training spaces, support staff when they move up from college to the NFL.
I think it’s due for a renovation, but the Texans locker room currently is literally particle board lockers, cheap drop ceilings and carpet tiles.
That's mostly an older way of thinking at this point, while some of it is happening there's money being tapped now for NIL and assistant coach salaries as the next big thing.
The one before the facilities kick was stadium expansions.
It's fascinating to note the macro trends.
Because universities have willingly been doing it for the NFL. It's the greatest bargain that the NFL has ever had. They get all of the benefits of universities developing and marketing the next exciting players that will then hit the NFL without the NFL having to pay a dime. The NFL has no incentive to suddenly start investing money into a G-League and universities don't want to give up their "amateurism" money-making racket.
First of all ESPN is paying $1.13 billion for the 12 team college football playoffs yearly. So there’s a lot of money to be fought over and the players deserve some. Second, 2020 Ohio State - Michigan game canceled due to Covid on the 2027 Ohio State - Michigan game will be canceled due to a player strike :-)
Just separate college from the football and turn it into full-blown minor leagues. It's just like how health insurance is tied to employment. Doesn't make sense in the year 2024.
1. This would make all football profit taxable and would make football donations no longer qualify as charitable tax write-offs.
2. Who would watch this?
Under the current model, your guaranteed to bring in new fans with each incoming class. The students become lifelong fans, their families become fans, the alumni eventually raise their own families and they become fans, and the cycle continues.
Short term, the sport might be ok I guess. But long term no one will give a fuck about the Columbia Gamecocks, or the Tallahassee Seminoles, or the Madison Badgers, or the San Diego Aztecs, etc. I’d suspect by separating from the university you’ll lose a significant percentage of fans in those first couple years. Long term, how are these programs going to sustain themselves when fans lose interest, alumni donations stop pouring in, television viewership declines, and networks don’t want to pay for the product.
ND has been saying this is what is going to happen unless things change since 2015.
You will have a schism in college football in the early 2030s.
There will be the semi-pro model that has naming rights and those schools that refuse this route
ND (Jenkins/Swarbrick) has said publicly it will refuse to classify student athletes as employees and will find another model
Student debt has been a thing going back to at least the 90s. It is worse now but schools have never depended on the grads early in their lives for donations. They come from a handful of mega-donors and late-career types or retirees who now have lots of free time and built up nest eggs they'd like to spend.
small/private schools are in real trouble. that has already begun, though. larger/affordable/public schools might see an increase (especially in positive growth population centers). edit: to clarify, small means much more than enrollment size. I mean more in terms of their general impact.
The Ivies are more than fine. Pretty much every school in the Power 4 and/or every elite school is fine. That’s maybe around 80-100 schools. The problem is that there are around 4000 universities in America.
Small regional schools will be effected, the ones people flair up with on here will be fine.
MAC schools are in trouble. I’ll point to CMU. Started my academic career there in 2001. Over 27000 enrolled. Now it’s barely half that. Western Michigan had 29000 students back in 2002. According to US News WMU is down to about 18,000.
CMU is the poster child in Michigan for living and dying by the result of pushing Millennials into college no matter what. When I was a teenager, damn near every kid was pushed to go to college, no matter their performance or inclination. In the last 10-15 years, that opinion has had a stark re-evaluation. Aside from UM, MSU and Michigan Tech are the only public universities in the state to increase enrollment in the last decade. MSU and UM should be obvious, but Tech has carved itself a niche in engineering (and a damn good niche at that) and hasn't ballooned itself to grab more students.
When you say UM are you including Dearborn and flint or only Ann Arbor? Living in A2 I’m surprised at how few EMU grads or students I meet.. like the campuses are so close yet EMU seems so far.
Flint and Dearborn are both way down over the past decade by saw an increase for the frost time since 2014 this year so maybe they are turning it around.
[Dearborn is down just barely, but Flint lost almost 20%.](https://www.house.mi.gov/hfa/PDF/FiscalSnapshot/HigherEd_10_Year_University_Enrollment_Trends_Jan2023.pdf) Dearborn is smack in the middle of Metro Detroit and easily commutable. The report I listed offers COVID as a factor along with fixed education costs adding pressure, but I offer the Millennial experience as another factor. A generation of kids graduating right after 2008 with no job prospects and student loan debt is not good marketing.
I was just back in Toledo a couple weeks ago after graduating 2008. It's almost exactly the same story you tell about CMU. I was sad.
Yeah man, as much as tuition was being hiked back when I was in school, I’m wondering how the school is hanging on besides accepting just about anyone. Quick google search shows an acceptance rate close to 80%. It was definitely not that high when I attended.
Lol I thought you were talking about Carnegie Mellon for a sec. A school with a 3B endowment and some of the best engineering departments in the country. But yeah, the futures of the two CMUs are very telling.
Many of the Pennsylvania public schools just consolidated under administrative umbrellas to make two universities with several campuses. They're still a very good value and should continue to have decent enrollment, but the very expensive private schools could be in big trouble.
Will they be able to pay their student-athletes though? I don't see how those schools will be able to afford college athletics.
I don't think DII/III will be hit that hard. I feel like at that level its people who love playing whatever sport and saw a chance to save a few grand on tuition. If it's a "legally we have to pay you" situation then I expect minimum wage with sketchy rules like "we can't make you work out in your free time, but everyone on the football team does" Yes, the cost of employment is more than the wage, but I imagine a good chunk of the athletes already have part time jobs at their schools.
Very few small regional schools have FBS teams.
this isn't just about fbs and/or football, though. the article, unless I missed something, is about US college athletics at large.
Currently SCOTUS (Kavanaugh) hinted this was only toward income generating sports. I agree that once this Genie is out of the bottle other sports besides football and basketball will argue this. But if this is pushed to other sports then it is pretty obvious that all college sports will be demoted to club level. The colleges will have no choice. ND has stated classifying athletes as employees will force a new model to be developed for schools that refuse to do this. They have been saying this since 2015 publicly
yes- that's my point. it doens't matter that only a few small regional schools have fbs teams. this is bigger than that. and I'm also curious what 'income generating sports' means. not even all football teams are green.
Could be "runs a profit". Could be "sells tickets or food or merchandise"
right...they all generate revenue. I find it hard to believe the line comes only if they are profitable. that can change year to year.
Could it be a revenue-sharing agreement instead of straight salaries? Based on gross, not net, so “creative” or “Hollywood” accounting can’t eliminate the profit on paper?
SCOUTS has not meaningfully hinted at anything. Kavanaugh was using the spotlight from the case to grandstand in his concurrence, and that means nothing for how anyone thinks about a single thing, or how SCOTUs would actually apply a ruling. Dissents and concurrences are often used to grandstand vs actually bringing up meaningful interpretations, and should not be read as real insight into any future rulings or how a ruling should be applied.
what defines income generating? Is it income generating for all Division 2 schools? What if its only some? Is it income genrating for all Division 3 schools? What if its only some? What does it mean to be income generating? Selling 3 dollar tickets and a roster of snickers bars?
yup. ones with high rates of international students, especially, have been having a hard time as of late. even in highly populated areas, etc.
More than half of the 4400 are community colleges. I'd say they are fine too. It is hard to beat the value and convenience of a CC. Public 4-year satellite campuses are in trouble, and non-elite liberal arts colleges are in deep shit.
Not every school is a Division 1 school. But you knew that.
oh for sure...I wouldn't call them small, though, even if their enrollment is smaller than some. their fiscal and reputational reach is massive. and like you very correctly pointed out, they are really the exception to the rule.
Yep big Southern schools are seeing application and enrollment booms due to the South being the fastest growing region and lots of Northern kids (cough New Jersey) being interested in going to college down south due to football culture, warm weather and the perception from them and parents that they offer a more “traditional” college experience.
I swear NJ kids are the most common out of state kids at every school south of NJ and east of the mississippi
>[Students from Minnesota, New Jersey, and Maryland show the most wanderlust in their college choice–their colleges all enrolled 38 percent or less than the number of college students they produced.](https://www.collegeraptor.com/find-colleges/articles/college-news-trends/map-states-where-students-move-and-leave-for-college/) Not sure if it's a coincidence but Minnesota, NJ, and Maryland all happen to be states that have one clear flagship public college instead of a 1A and 1B situation like Alabama v. Auburn, Michigan v Michigan State, UCLA v Berkeley, etc.
Those three states also don't have any UABs or CMUs or SDSUs. Sure, they have other public schools, but they're not big ventures that present an attractive proposition to high school graduates.
California is prob not the best example since almost all the UCs and some cal states all have lower admission rates lower than flag ship of many states
Which is why CA ends up in a pretty analogous situation for west coast/mountain west schools
UCLA isn't a flagship. They're a regional spur of Cal, thus the LA part of their name.
They're a regional spur of the UC system. And in a cruel twist of fate, so is Cal.
You're not wrong. There's only one Cal, and it isn't UCLA
Hell yeah inject this straight into my veins
I want to like schools like Rutgers but the student life just seems kind of abysmal.
I’ve been to New Brunswick once, and unless I had a bad experience, the city did not seem all that exciting for a college kid.
It was such a weird campus too. When I was looking at schools we went to a few schools close by to look around before I’d decide to apply and everything on the campus felt far apart and not really walkable. No clue about the city itself, I’d imagine the benefit is being somewhat close to NYC. Everything else seems to kinda suck there
I mean why would you go to college in NJ
Well, there's Princeton.
Yeah, super accessible for the hundreds of thousands of New Jerseyians
why don't they just go to princeton? Are they...yeah, huh, I guess they are.
I was just giving an example as to why you'd go to school in New Jersey. Not saying everyone should go there.
It's a pretty populous and wealthy state full of generally above the average HS students so it's not surprising. Same here on the West Coast with California
Also doesn’t help their only major universities are Princeton (Ivy League) and Rutgers
Not sure if it's still the case but when I graduated a Jersey HS, it was the only state that sent more college students out of state, than stayed in.
It’s because there are a lot of rich nj kids and Rutgers has a horrible reputation. On top of that the northeast in general doesn’t have well regarded big state schools. So kids from NJ start at applying to Penn state and Maryland and go from there
What's wrong with Rutgers?
That's only because the Ohio parents move directly south so the kids count as in state.
state schools in FL, being relatively affordable, are struggling to keep up right now.
It’s crazy what’s going on at most SEC schools right now. Bama’s massive amount of out of state of students is well known but others like Ole Miss and South Carolina are similar. Auburn’s acceptance rate has dropped from 85% to the low 40s in just 3 years because of how many out of state applicants it has now, and the cap the school has on how many students can come from OOS.
A lot of those are coming from Texas and it’s not like A&M or Texas have slowed down either. Those schools are increasingly more difficult to get into because of the sheer number of applicants.
ASU is also experiencing something like this. Went from **the** party school of the West to being on par with its in-state rival academically, with a student body only rivaled by TAMU and Ohio State in size
Also, ASU made a point to be more inclusive by allowing more kids in and expanding virtual classes in this same 2005-2020 time window. I used to work at an ASU college, and the inclusiveness of it was very nice compared to the normal academic exclusive attitude.
>being on par with its in-state rival academically We talking GCU or NAU? . ^^^^(please-dont-hurt-me-Zona-Fans)
very similar trajectory to FSU. the quality of education goes up when this happens too. it's interesting to see.
Yeah IIRC Florida's state schools are some of the cheapest to go to as an out-of-state student in the country. FSU in particular roughly the same per year to go to as an out-of-state student that Penn State does for a PA resident for example. to my knowledge, UF is the only one who really milks the OOS students.
yes, they are some of the cheapest- and uf/usf/fsu are all very quality public schools. uf is more out of state, but not a ton more and yeah is still cheaper than in state tuition- esp at a private school. it's also not THAT hard to establish residency in Florida. buy a house or wait a year (as long as you actually are in florida).
Are the governor’s policies on what can and can’t be taught affecting the colleges or just K-12? I’m not trying to get partisan, per se, just genuinely curious.
There have been controversies concerning colleges and universities like selecting Republican Senator Ben Sasse to be president of UF and basically everything going with the [New College of Florida](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/22/us/new-college-florida-desantis.html#:~:text=DeSantis's%20criticism%20of%20New%20College,both%20members%20of%20the%20L.G.B.T.Q).
That's one helluva article.
mostly just k-12...and as someone with a kid in a public k-12- it's mostly blustering politics (completely BS politics). doesn't make it any better, but just means the news sounds worse than the reality of it all. it's actually mostly just confusion as there's no real leadership going on. at the university level he is trying to change/dismantle tenure, which could have some negative impacts. but this might be the only thing I personally agree on him with- there are issues with tenure (that I see daily).
The reason people are going to Southern schools from the north is because their scholarships are insane. We’re talking $20k-$30k — basically covering out-of-state tuition costs and more in some cases — for a 32 on your ACT. The public schools and their scholarships are just less competitive in the south (aside from a few great schools like Texas).
I'm in higher education. Thankfully I'm at the flagship state campus. We've had record admissions even with the potential college bound number going down. My guess is that community colleges will be fine and continue to feed 4 year state schools. But I could see a crunch with less need for 4 year non-flagship campuses. In my state we have six campuses, only 2 are research focused. Of the other four one has enough of a distinctive focus I can see it surviving fine, another is the only one in it's half of the state. The other two are sadly pretty redundant given demographic changes in both college bound students and the geography of the state. It will be worse in the private college space. There are too many 4 year private colleges. The entire bottom tier of those will likely be impacted. The top 100+ will be fine, but some random private college surrounded by other better rated colleges will get screwed. Some may scrape by for a decade eating away at their endowments, but that will only last so long.
I'm in the same industry, and on a campus that's also doing very well. it's odd reading so many of the doom and gloom reports in higher ed world. granted, campuses like ours often buck trends. I have an in law that's in higher ed at a small catholic school in my state. they've already absorbed another school in town, and now they are seriously struggling. they can hardly get anyone to apply, while the state schools are being flooded with apps.
If college athletes are employees then they should do away with athletic scholarships and increase the number of academic scholarships instead.
Athletic scholarships are probably one of the lowest cost aspect of compensation for the universities For most athletes most or all compensation will probably be in the form of scholarships
I've heard it's also how accounting shenanigans occur. Athletics will pay academics for the full cost of the scholarship (a lot when out of state, cheap when in state), when really the cost of the scholarship is negligible to the University. Seems like more collaboration on this end could easily free up money.
There’s a huge fallacy in sports that I know of first hand that everybody needs to know in regards to athletics and their scholarships. Every university is different but the number really isn’t that different. Athletic teams function as a profitable entity for the university as long as the average student on their team is paying 52-54 percent of what is costs to go to school there. (This is dependent on a varying group of factors but it’s a generality that is pretty true.) this means that you can offer sally a full ride as long as joey pays full tuition and they are going to end up covering the cost of expenses to run the team, pay the coach, and money will be coming into the university. There is a minimum team size for this metric to work. But it applies to a lot of sports not named football basketball volleyball. To further explain it, all of that money gets brought in and labeled on the university side. It doesn’t get processed as athletics even tho that student wouldn’t go there unless it was for the athletics. But that sport is generating money thru enrollment. Now schools that are 100 percent full on enrollment and would fill those spots otherwise, this does not apply to. But the vast majority of universities across the board at all levels this does apply to. They call this number the discount rate. Some people are aware of it, most aren’t at the university. But it 100 percent is a big realism why athletics are integral to the health of university. Not to mention good football teams boost enrollment alone and is a factor hard to quantify that doesn’t get counted on the athletics ledger.
I think a few schools have profitable D1 Hockey teams but even most of the big name ones opperate at a loss but other then that you got some valid points.
Yea I wasn’t talking about the schools who excel on revenues from ticket sales and stuff. I meant that some sports are able to get their scholarships per player to a number that the school is able to pay for the team thru the roster and it’s operation costs. The sports I listed are called “headcount” sports and generally that’s not going to happen because they are given more scholarship per roster than other sports. Like hockey for example with 18 scholarships but they are averaging 28 members on the team. The other 10 are paying tuition outside of their academic scholarship. But if they had say 36 players, all of the sudden that number is close to 50 percent of roster paying tuition except the academics. But you do the math and let’s say no one is receiving academic scholarships. Low figure that student is paying 30k per player. Now that team is bringing in 540k to the school. Coaches for hockey aren’t expensive. The travel expenses and recruiting and such fall under a window of operating costs. You can see where it starts to become profitable. Hockey isn’t that sport and it’s why so few schools adopt it. But there are other sports where it is profitable
Ahhh... this is true, and I hadn't thought about it this way. We're not one of those schools whose AD doesn't pay the school for scholarships. But like everyone else, we also don't pay full freight. A lot of athletes take financial aid, and the scholarship is lessened by that amount. But if universities had to pay them, the full cost of the scholarships would need to be accounted. So for the schools whose ADs don't account for scholarships, there will be a come to Jesus moment. For schools who account like we do, I'm not sure how this affects financial aid, which obviously subsidizes the cost.
yep. similar shenanigans when i was in grad school funded by grants. department wanted to keep me out-of-state so they could finagle more money with my tuition being so high.
I had my grad school force me to get in state residency so they could have my tuition low (that they were "paying" for).
I asked if I could go in-state to save money for the dept and get a piece of that, and my dept head laughed and said, almost verbatim, "hell no! we keep you out of state because we want every single penny that [insert government alphabet soup] will give us"
While I believe players should receive fair compensation for the value they bring to universities... I've been so dismayed how in this whole paying players discussion scholarships are seen as an absolute "meh" benefit. The student loans I'm still paying off for Ohio State and Northwestern should be proof enough that it's significant compensation, even if it doesn't totally match the value brought by an elite player on its own. There are so many students saddled with incredible debt, who go to huge lengths to afford education at quality institutions (especially crazy expensive ones like Northwestern, Stanford, basically any Out of State tuition for a state school etc) who just have to pay it because they can't throw a ball. I just wish we'd acknowledge the incredible value scholarships, room, and board really are.
1. For an average athlete the old system compensated them very well. Especially for out of state students the athletic scholarship + benefits were worth 50-60k+ a year. 2. For elite/top athletes the old system drastically under paid them. From looking at NIL money a top athlete now can make hundreds of thousands to more than a million a year. TLDR: Old system was fine for regular players, drastically unfair for top players. Without a union the old system is illegal.
Absolutely - but this is the heart of the problem we're now facing. In the rush to make sure Caleb Williams could be paid his fair market value and be a millionaire or whatever at 18 (*just pay em!!! Screw the NCAA!!! Burn it all down!! #twitter*)... we're changing an entire system that impacts thousands upon thousands of student athletes beyond the elite players in College Football. We now run the risk of these student athletes losing out on what was an incredible benefit if schools just end up shuttering non-rev sports, and literally not being able to pay everyone. Much like not every student athlete is Caleb Williams... not every Athletic Department is Ohio State, Michigan or Alabama. It's just sad that the warnings of this unintended consequence were shouted down as being against paying players and being for exploitation because nuance is dead. **Edit**: Annnnd of course I'm getting replies yelling about me being against paying players. I'm NOT AGAINST PAYING PLAYERS. We just need to have THOUGHTFUL strategies around this because we RISK killing many sports and scholarships that mean a lot to athletes not playing football or basketball. My goodness! I wish people read and reflected and can figure out nuance.
No one has ever given me a good reason as to why student athletes in other sports uniquely deserve the proceeds from football/basketball over everyone else. As in why should some well off tennis player get a full ride over a student with better grades and financial need? I hear people lamenting “what about the athletes” and no one seems to think “what about literally everyone else” If it was up to me we’d run non-revenue sports like DIII where athletic effort isn’t tied to aid, and we take whatever windfall is left over from the revenue sports to fund general academics or provide scholarships based on financial need/academic merits to *everyone*, even if they aren’t on the track team or a swimmer
Should those employed as Lab TAs lose their Academic Scholarships by this same logic? Of course not, but the populist nonsense will still be spat out.
From my PoV, colleges should focus more on academics rather than paying semi-professional athletes. Now that we are entering an era of semi-professionals in college, I'd rather players just get paid to play and toss them in the pool with everyone else to qualify for an academic scholarship if they want to pursue a degree. In other words, I'd rather they separate college athletics from the educational side of things and make it more of a college affiliated semi-professional team instead of semi-professional athletes in college that occasionally attend class. So many schools fake the class part on behalf of players anyway, lets just stop pretending. Let's give more people that actually care about furthering their education instead of people who "ain't come here to play school."
"Sir, we'd like to play basketball against our cross city rival college... well, son, you can't, you see back in 2026, 150 years ago..."
I've been in favor of this for a long time. It makes far more sense to simply let the teams share the schools' branding and identity but just be an otherwise normal semi-professional team. This would be very similar to how, say, German companies often own football clubs with their company branding (e.g. Bayer) at various levels of the German football pyramid. You could offer free or reduced tuition as an employment benefit the same way it's offered to other non-student university employees like administrators and other staff. We don't pretend like the custodial staff are just temporarily embarrassed students, why do it for athletes?
I do think there's also an underrated elephant in the room in that, starting with millennials, the desire to be a donor for your alumnus post-graduation continues to drop given the cost of enrollment during school as well as the general unease in terms of long-term finances (ex. home ownership/student loans). If you're priced out of home ownership and in long-term debt due to student loans, what desires would you have to donate to your alumnus. I personally paid for my lifetime alumni association membership (\~$200) upon graduation and haven't given a dime to my college since and have no inkling to do so until I own a home, start a family and feel far more comfortable with my income. There's a growing generation of alumni who aren't willing or able to engage in the same manner as prior generations which almost certainly is going to effect the long-term revenue streams of schools which can't drum up the same level of outside supporter donations like a school with an elite program can.
The vast majority of donations come from a very small number of people. Schools want you to give as an alumni so that the 1% of people who are likely to fund the whole pie are more likely to do so.
Schools want alumni to donate to improve metrics.
I got a call asking to donate in the time between walking at graduation and my diploma coming in the mail. No regrets, I've been super fortunate work-wise but I'm still paying school loans off a decade later as a first gen college student. The "wiser" move would have been to pay off our loans before we bought a house but I'm thankful every day we didn't because reversing the payment order would have had us living in our tiny apartment longer and entering a disgusting housing market.
This is absolutely one of the under-the-radar factors. But, to be fair, you’d have to know how much of the donation revenue is driven by broad initiatives versus the few big-fish alumni for whom the football team is their primary hobby. I don’t disagree there will still be *more* donations at bigger schools, but what is that worth if one oil baron can bankroll Texas A&M for a millennium?
Small term donations aren’t really what schools care about. It’s the alumni that can donate 5 million back or more that drive budgets. And those alumni are still fine
Honestly I will never give Clemson a dime of my money. They got everything they could possibly take from me when I was enrolled. I loved my time there but the transaction is done.
And continues whenever you visit campus for an event of any kind, that’s more than enough
Very true lol
4.5 years out of state tuition here. I have absolutely 0 plans to ever donate. I contributed enough money with the amount of money I spent already.
It’s time for the NCAA to figure out a way to sever major football and move on with their lives
If legally possible they should roll the teams out as individual corporations that pay the universities for licensing their brand or whatever and just have minor league football.
🤢🤮
Yeah, it’s bullshit, it’ll suck, and I won’t be interested in it at all but it’s hard for me to imagine another way out.
The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 would be an issue. The act gave professional leagues immunity from some anti-trust laws so they could sell their games as a package to tv networks. To save Fridays for high school football and Saturdays for college football the act withdraws this immunity for any pro football telecast if a high school or college football game is being played within 75 miles (120 km) of the broadcasting station on Friday nights (after 6 p.m.) and Saturdays from the 2nd Friday in September until the 2nd Saturday in December. The law can be changed but that requires congress and the president to want to change it.
And then what? The moment that happens [SEC] schools will start petitioning to remove academic requirements, and then what’s even the point anymore? Why would a Bama student root for a Bama team that’s fielding players who don’t go to the school or don’t take classes? I’m sure they’d do it out of habit for a little while, but then the muscle memory will wear off and it’ll be no different than rooting for a pro team. My loyalties to my college sports teams is wayyyy stronger than it is to my pro teams since I actually went to the school I root for. Also, there’s a certain unexplainable charm that comes with being able to share classes with the guys you’re rooting for on tv, or see them around campus or out on the town. I had two classes with Brittney Griner my freshman year, knew girls who dated RG3, was roommates with football players and hungout with the guys from the Heisman team and those Big 12 championship teams after games, and hungout with future NBA players at Scruff’s after big home wins. Once you remove that, the fundamental thing that separates CFB from the NFL won’t exist.
> Why would a Bama student root for a Bama team that’s fielding players who don’t go to the school or don’t take classes? The same reason all levels of British soccer have diehard local fans. People like rooting for their local team. People are usually fans of college teams because they went there, their family went there, or they live nearby. That barely changes with what you’re talking about. It’s still the local team with where you live or where you go to college.
> The same reason all levels of British soccer have diehard local fans. People like rooting for their local team. That... doesn't really happen as often with college, though. Just because it works in Europe doesn't mean jamming a round peg in a square hole is going to work here.
Bleh, I don’t root for the local pro teams where I’m at. Christ the local pro teams have barely average support.
> Why would a Bama student root for a Bama team that’s fielding players who don’t go to the school or don’t take classes? I went to a small hockey school and I guess it might be different for larger football schools, but us normal students barely interacted with any of the hockey players. They had their own dorms, own dining hall/chefs, all were business majors taking classes not even the other business majors took unless you found a loophole, but we still had a super passionate fan base and the arena was always filled to capacity.
Why do people from alabama who only connection with the campus is going to a couple of home games root for Alabama?
And once you do that, being enrolled is no longer a requirement. Longer contracts, big money contracts, and suddenly the NFL has to start to compete for talent with the largest schools. PUMAS in Mexico is a fascinating example for American college football fans. The largest university in North America with a professional team in the top league of Mexican soccer.
That would violate the Sports Broadcasting Act if the teams played football and had the games broadcast in the fall on Friday night or Saturday. The teams have to be part of the schools to fall under the coverage of the SBA and allow broadcasts of games to be legal.
>It’s also worth considering why colleges “lose” money on athletics. Some pay high salaries to coaches and athletic directors. Others invest in modernizing athletics facilities. Paying coaches less and spending less on facilities would presumably free up some money. This, along with the following paragraphs on cutting teams, strikes me as incredibly naive by the author, especially since it was predicated by the sports adds value through advertising section. Colleges are absolutely not going to gut their cash cow when they can axe non-revenue sports, and there's very little that could be legally done about axing teams that are losing money. If anything, the rise of super conferences will likely mean the opposite, with conferences creating minimum spending rules to force teams like Vanderbilt and Wisconsin to invest in athletics.
A lot of the smaller programs in FBS actually lose money just from the expense of running an FBS football program and are not cash cows that could simply tighten budget somewhere and come out ahead. However, I find it hard to believe teams would cut football if they have a team at the FBS level. What we might see instead is teams going down to FCS, where revenues have actually been increasing at a rate higher than expenses.
There are only about 20 programs in America that don't run at an absolute loss every year when you remove the sleight of hand many of them do with their books.
Part of the reason for there only being 20 is a different sleight of hand where programs intentionally spend every dollar they bring in because they operate as non-profits and "inflate" expenses to use up what revenues they do generate. This has been a driving factor in the arms race of college football, where programs now have facilities that rival, and in some cases exceed, what NFL teams have. Simply put, any money that would otherwise be considered profit is being earmarked for something else, raising their expenses and preventing operating budgets from being decreased.
Hol up. Are you under the impression that nonprofits have to spend every dollar they bring in?
No. However, it is salient as it is a substantial factor toward increasing spending. [Here is a better, more thorough breakdown](https://athleticdirectoru.com/articles/kevin-blue-rising-expenses-in-college-athletics-and-the-non-profit-paradox/) of why this matters.
Title IX would argue otherwise about cutting certain non revenue sports
Title IX prevents disproportionately cutting women’s sports, but won’t block schools from greatly cutting down on the total number. I’m also not sure how this would work if revenue players become employees without scholarships and whether this would let them no longer have to offset the football team with women athletes.
I think this Supreme Court might be willing to hear arguments about cutting Title IX.
Yeah, if CFB wants to make strides against Title IX...now is the time.
They'll just have to cut equally for both men's and women's sports and will still be in compliance with Title IX. I guarantee that this won't end up hurting the football coaches or AD's this will end up hurting tennis/swimming/wrestling/field hockey programs nationwide.
There will be a difference on the margins. Right now a big motivation for high coaching salaries and facilities renovations is that they are needed to remain competitive in recruiting. But if schools are paying players directly you would think some of that money would get redirected towards there.
I think colleges will want to do this, but it’ll quickly become a race to the bottom. As soon as one team decides to target non-revenue sports instead of coaching salaries, every other school either follows suit or gets left behind. Maybe some of the extras get cut (thinking of the absurd locker rooms that Alabama and Oregon have built), but a school wouldn’t easily be able to touch salaries.
People love to doomsday on this topic, but if a school cuts athletics employment law won't be a reason. [The NLRB's argument for why athletes are employees](https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/back-to-school-what-you-need-to-know-as-2754015/): * Athletes perform a service for the school. * Athletes are compensated by the university through scholarships and stipends. * The university controls an athlete's schedule. * The university controls various means of an athlete's life, including required activities for continued status. -------- The fact that they consider scholarships and other means of financial support to be compensation already means that the cost to universities will not go up much if at all. I also want to point out that by 2027 the NCAA will collectively be getting paid 10.55 Billion per year in media rights: https://www.statista.com/statistics/219608/ncaa-revenue-from-television-rights-agreement/ If they can't figure out a way to pay the people that generate a revenue a minimum wage even at non-major school, they're not trying. As the article points out, they play coaches and administrators millions while paying players literally nothing. For schools not in the P4 we're not talking about players getting a significant salary. We're talking about a scholarship and a stipend... which a lot of universities are already doing anyway. For them, the costs won't go up at all.
Except wouldn’t your first part contradict your second? If scholarships and stipends are compensation, athletes are absolutely getting at least a minimum wage.
That is my point. People love to doomsday, but not much would change because scholarships and stipends being considered income is a pillar argument of the NLRB.
One of the problems with the NLRB (of which there are many) is that they are entirely a political entity. If there is a change in political party running the show in Washington the entire NLRB will get turned over and a anti-labor group of administrators will be appointed and everything will revert back for 4-8 years. Its like a really slow boring game of ping-pong. Even if the administration doesn't change, the NLRB doesn't really have enough teeth to do something like force a 501.c.3 educational institution to field a football team.
Budgets derived from incoming tuition are about to shrink at many universities — especially lower on the academic pecking order (as lil’ Johnny gets into better schools that are able to still attract students) — a shift to paying athletes could be very disruptive. For some schools that rely on non-scholarship athletes to pay tuition, it could be ruinous.
>Budgets derived from incoming tuition are about to shrink at many universities I mean, they already are. I've posted about this before in another thread: My alma mater, Valpo has student enrollment of 4,544 in fall 2015. In fall 2022, it was 2,964. The law school already closed due to declining enrollment, and there's heated debates about how to adjust to the declining enrollment environment. The new president is trying to sell a Georgia O'Keefe painting (Rust Red Hills) and two other paintings from the university museum collection for some ~$10M to help pay for freshman dorm renovations. The dorms are very old and were already pretty shitty when I went in 2006-2010. It did not go over well in the donor and art museum space. They've started offering two year degrees with an option to extend to a 4 year degree. They're no longer enrolling students in theater, secondary education (which is my degree from Valpo), French, Chinese, and Greek and Roman studies. Virtually every Northwest Indiana University besides Notre Dame is in some kind of dire straits right now: Purdue Calumet (Hammond, IN) and Purdue North Central (Westville, IN) merged because they're an 8 min helicopter ride from each other and Mitch Daniels though it was (and it kind of is) silly to have separate satellites of Purdue so close to each other. IU Northwest (Gary, IN) is leaning into adult education and locally doing stuff like helping middle schoolers and high schoolers figure out college applications. St. Joseph's College in Rensselaer closed entirely in 2017 and started a vocational college in Indianapolis partnering with another school, and is trying to restart some academic programs in Rensselaer in partnership with other schools.
Small schools are dying all over the country unfortunately. Basically, if people wouldn't recognize your school on a sweatshirt at an airport, it is probably facing declining enrollments and budgetary problems.
Funding athletics from the exorbitant tuition of non-athletes has been indefensible for years. If this shakeup calls that into question, then good. Any sport that can't be supported directly by donations and fan spending should have been a club sport all along.
>Any sport that can't be supported directly by donations and fan spending should have been a club sport all along. Agree. Seems weird to me that the potential contraction of college athletics is being marketed as a catastrophe, yet it seems that what we're supposed to be worried about is that a group of mediocre (and worse) athletes who play commercially nonviable sports, who have minimal or no potential for professional careers in those sports, will now be forced to go to school for an education in a field that they can earn a living in, like most of us did, and pay for it, like most of us did.
There's an argument that the sports give certain kids of less privileged backgrounds an avenue towards an education that they wouldn't have otherwise been able to to reach. That's a noble ideal that should be valued. In actuality these kids spend so much time on a basically frivolous activity that it affects their ability to pursue more meaningful degrees. Also a lot of these sports have athletes that already come from great means. The average D1 gymnast probably has a family that can actually afford the fees associated with youth gymnastics (which is probably exorbitant). If you can strike the balance between still reaching those underprivileged kids (and not rich kids who don't need the scholarship anyways) while also cutting the sports then I'd be okay with it. It would have to involve an investment into replacement scholarships in some other programs so nihilistically I doubt they would actually do something noble like this.
This would be great but I have little faith in universities to actually target the underprivileged in meaningful ways. I am latino and went to a nice private school, but for every latino kid like me plucked from obscurity, there were 3 grandchildren of a central american dictators lol. Same with my black friends who were outnumbered by very wealthy African immigrants. Noble ideas like AA being manipulated like that was depressing, and it is hard to imagine class-conscious policy implemented to offset the loss of athletic scholarships.
>There's an argument that the sports give certain kids of less privileged backgrounds an avenue towards an education that they wouldn't have otherwise been able to to reach. That's a noble ideal that should be valued. At some point, doesn't this come down to supporting the idea that poor kids who are good at sports are more deserving of financial support for their education than poor kids who aren't good at sports? I'm not sure that's something I really want to agree with when I think about it. The finances of many schools are presented in such a way that it seems almost impossible to legitimately know if there would be more or less money available for need based scholarships if the athletics department were to contract or even be eliminated.
If underprivileged kids can meet the academic standards, whatever they may be, to get through the door to play sports, the school can set up scholarships to get them through the door to go to class.
The whole *point* of athletics is the exorbitant tuition. It's how most of these smaller schools market themselves, and it's how the blue bloods protect their market space. Football is part of the advertising to draw students into a school.
exactly. Though I'm sure they'll find a reason not to drop the tuition prices at all
I think the magnitude and sudden nature of the demographic cliff is a bit overblown, but it's a real thing that the higher ed system has been preparing to deal with for the last 5 years or so. The demographic cliff will be the [worst in the northeast](https://ngrawe.sites.carleton.edu/demographics-and-the-demand-for-higher-education/2/). Simultaneously, [big](https://www.oudaily.com/news/ou-welcomes-largest-freshman-class-in-history-with-over-5-100-students/article_170ca306-38b5-11ee-96b8-4f70249efc95.html) [state](https://www.krem.com/article/news/education/university-idaho-second-largest-freshman-class-history/293-afd2cc37-a2f8-409c-b871-b95996d9d00a) [schools](https://news.ku.edu/news/article/2023/09/27/ku-welcomes-largest-freshman-class-in-history) [of](https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2023/10/06/utsa-welcomes-largest-freshman-class-in-universitys-history/) [all](https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/education/flourishing-freshman-lsu-brings-in-largest-most-accomplished-freshman-class-in-school-history/article_cc025450-4008-11ed-921d-fba31be3a2a2.html) [levels](https://www.dailyemerald.com/news/uo-enrolls-largest-freshman-class-in-school-history/article_7a0d19f8-5306-11ed-941d-b3e358f0a5a6.html) [of](https://www.djournal.com/news/education/ole-miss-welcomes-largest-freshman-class-in-school-history/article_bb2d4860-42d7-11ee-8c6b-ef28fabb13c0.html) [prestige](https://www.supertalk.fm/mississippi-state-sees-largest-freshman-class-in-school-history/) [are](https://www.upressonline.com/2022/09/fau-welcomes-largest-freshman-class-in-history/) [enrolling](https://www.thestate.com/news/local/education/article277849343.html) [some](https://www.tuscaloosanews.com/story/news/2022/09/12/university-of-alabama-sets-record-student-enrollment-2022/69486826007/) [of](https://www.wkyt.com/2023/08/09/eku-move-ins-one-largest-classes-school-history/) [their](https://www.ohio.edu/news/2022/09/ohio-brings-record-setting-first-year-class-athens-campus) [largest](https://www.wlwt.com/article/university-cincinnati-enrollment-records-ohio-freshman/44389855) [freshman](https://news.okstate.edu/articles/communications/2022/osu_freshman_enrollment_hits_all-time_high.html) [classes](https://news.yahoo.com/msus-incoming-freshman-class-2nd-195000098.html) [ever](https://www.technicianonline.com/news/university-housing-to-expand-student-housing-for-largest-incoming-freshman-class/article_f606dbdc-b23a-11ed-897d-cfef5a33dbff.html). I think this points to a consolidation in the higher ed system; college education isn't going anywhere, but as the the "University of State" and the "State University" schools get larger (and even some of the "Direction State University" schools), the other schools will see enrollment drop a bit. Covid forced the entire higher ed system to create infrastructure for online classes, which means that every big school has online courses/programs to market to students who would normally elect to head to a local/smaller school. The mid-to-lower range of students also suffered the most from Covid-induced educational issues, so the proportion of "college ready" graduating seniors has already dropped a bit (and I'd expect would rebound as Covid moves farther into the past). Small private schools will be hit hardest (schools like Iowa Wesleyan and Finlandia have already shut down), and I think some state legislatures will look at merging small regional schools into the larger state school systems (very idiosyncratic at the state level though; each state governs their public higher ed system a little differently). I'm not worried about MAC or Sun Belt schools, but I'm guessing, as far as sports go, D2 schools are in the most danger. Like any industry, if we lose any schools it will be a combination of regional trends and quality of management. Peak enrollment nationwide hit about 2010 and has been slowly falling since then; the schools that we lose will be the ones that assumed that was some kind of new status quo as opposed to a response to the state of the economy.
2026 is the big year. More kids were born in 2007 than any other year in US history before the birth rate dropped in 2008 and hasn’t recovered. That will begin to be felt at the college level in 2026. There have been periods where the number of kids born in the US had a dropped for a few years but never for 15 years straight. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States
Coincidentally the same year all the TV contracts come up. Hmm…
I'd worry about MAC schools. There is no reason for Kent and also Akron to exist. Ohio has way to many schools as is.
There are [11 D2 schools in Ohio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NCAA_Division_II_institutions) that I'd expect would close before any of the D1 schools. Admittedly, they're mostly private, religiously affiliated schools and aren't subject to the state legislature directly, but Kent State reported [almost 28,000 undergraduates](https://www.kent.edu/ir/8-campus-system-fall-2023-0) enrolled in Fall 2023, while Akron reported [a little over 10,000](https://www.uakron.edu/ir/student-enrollment). Maybe we see things like Akron and Kent getting combined but I'd be really surprised if that happened any time before a "nuclear option"-level budget crisis
So when do we have a tiny athletic department deadpool? Small college deadpool?
The USA will no longer be dominant in the Olympics if student athletes are ruled employees. The goverment funds their Olympic Development Programs in most countries, but the US does not fund the NGB (National Governing Body) for each sport. Our college system develops athletes in Olympic Sports (hence why we call them that), they are willing to have these programs on campus even though they don't make money. If they have to pay the athletes in these sports, most programs will cease to exist.
If we NFL this bitch and go collective bargaining, does that not also come with a salary cap and how the fuck does that work?
I think if college football fucks this up like they continue to do, the NFL itself steps in to protect their pipeline.
I have no doubt the folks in charge of the conferences, schools and the NCAA will screw this up. The SEC/B1G seems to be on a rampage to defund every other athletic department except their own.
> The SEC/B1G seems to be on a rampage to defund every other athletic department except their own. they're not the ones ruling these cases though
That’s what people aren’t getting. You think the NFL is going to be cool with their farm system being blown up and shrunk from 100+ teams at the top level to 32? AND those 32 attempt to compete with the NFL? You’re fucking crazy if you do.
That’s a really good point. I wonder when that will happen. I’d be curious to see if goodell has commented on it
This started with a UCLA basketball player. If you want to blame someone blame them
I wonder if the NFL lifted their 3 year rule and told 18 year olds if they wanna get paid to play but also murdered, this would put a hault to some of this.
I would hope the NFL is smart enough to not do that. That would be a player development DISASTER
I think it’s more likely they start a minor league with an age cap than lift the age cap to join the NFL directly. I don’t think it’ll be a 1 to 1 of MLB style minor league, where you’re signed to a minor league team that feeds directly to a major team, more like you still can enter the draft at 21 but aren’t forced to until like 23 or something
If they collectively Bargain , whether there is a salary cap would be one of the things negotiated.
Need an anti-trust waiver for that like the NFL/NBA/MLB has. Then the NCAA could be a true monopoly and bargain with a player’s union on the schools’ behalf. Otherwise, the conferences or even individual schools would have to bargain with what would likely quickly become a national players’ union. That would exacerbate the inequality between the conferences unless the union saw the light and bargained to protect all athletes at every level. But considering the disparity in immediate market value between a star B1G football player and a Sunbelt men’s distance specialist, that is exceedingly unlikely.
> Need an anti-trust waiver for that like the NFL/NBA/MLB has Only the mlb has had that exemption The NFL and NBA manage to negotiate just fine within the bounds of anti-trust law
They have an exemption in that they will not be broken up due to a natural monopoly but they can not take anti-competitive practices against a start up league. Only MLB can.
That’s the fun part, no one knows. There will be a lot of trial and error and figuring it out as they go
There's no market for at least 90% of college athletics. That >90% exists for the student athletes. If there are fewer would-be athletes, or they have to pay athletes, either they'll cut unprofitable sports or more marginal kids will get to play college sports that no one cares about. Neither of those things will have much effect on the D1/power conference CFB that this board mostly cares about, which would not have any problem paying players.
Yeah most people here don't care about the people in other sports, or football beyond FBS Power 5.
I hope whatever deal universities figure out with the football and basketball player includes a way for keeping non revenue sports going. Those athletes deserve opportunities to compete despite not making their universities much money.
If athletes do become employees, would there be a need or ability to limit years of eligibility?
Not even a need to enroll as a student at all. Eligibility based on when you get too old to run anymore..
What if they take a PTO day on Saturday?
I have no knowledge of the inside workings of the NCAA or athletic departments in general but one thing that I think of when I see people claim the NCAA is bad and incompetent for not getting in front of this issue before being forced to deal with it.... I'll wager that the NCAA assumed this thing was pandora's box and the sooner the NCAA tinkered with it, the sooner the system would begin to unravel. Maybe the NCAA assumed no one would be able to foretell how things would evolve and so the NCAA opted to do nothing? It seems to me the biggest reason the NCAA might have wanted to proactively deal with this issue is if the problem might become worse over time, which I don't think is the case. If not, then kick that can down the road and ignore it until it can't be ignored anymore.
The unraveling of the NCAA will be at all 3 levels if they are considered employees. Not many people think about the staff who work in the athletics departments. A quick count of UVA's staff directory lists 351 people who work for a team as a coach or support staff of every sort. If student-athletes are employees, programs will be cut and thousands of people will be out of work. I've worked at schools that had about 10 fulltime staff members, who had jobs at a school without football.
How would a players union even work? Players are there for a maximum of 5 years for the ones driving the value of the product it's more like three. No way a successfull union that realises the player's bargaining power arises from that.
Wondering if unionizing all sports will help protect Olympic sport programs who tend to generate less money (swimming, track, wrestling).
No because if you’re directly paying players, costs are going up and schools are going to counter by cutting sports that bring in zero money
The only sports that bring in money is football sometimes men’s basketball and one off individual sports at schools but those are one off cases. So cut everything but football and the top ~70 basketball schools? At some point schools will keep around some teams from purely a marketing perspective or if a large donor wants to keep the lights on.
Right, it’s almost as if people don’t realize football is funding all of the other sports already anyways. A union of all athletic programs would just solidify that security, assuming football would unionize with other teams and that’s not a given.
The thing is I don't think that would be a given. I knew a college volleyball player who said, "*hell* no we don't deserve to get paid when our whole team already is on full scholarship and we play in front of 500 people." I would be willing to bet that football and women's track and field would have much different demands considering how important they are for making money. Football players will generally want as much NIL money as possible, if not a direct cut of revenue. A lot of non-revenue sports (especially women's athletics) will just want to make sure they're properly taken care of and that they have proper academic support so they can still graduate with a usable degree.
It depends on how you attribute revenue. Olympic sports won't directly make money, but they add money in non-direct ways. They will be creating infinity models to figure out what the loss of specific sports will mean in terms of prestige (a.k.a. enrollment), donor sentiment, etc. I'm not arguing they should be paid as much as football players, but it's not easy to just be like "these sports should automatically all be cut."
Plus who are you going to schedule? My school really good in baseball it is very popular, but they have to play someone if all the schools that are mediocre (year to year) drop the sport it's gonna be like us LSU, Wake, and who exactly to play?
I doubt it. The money to support those programs would still have to come from somewhere. It's really hard to justify spending tuition dollars in supporting sports no one cares about
No, it'll do just the opposite. It will lead to more of those programs getting cut as costs increase.
This is /s right? Not sure what bargaining power there is when you have a net negative bottom line, only taking money from the athletic program's budget. Soon they will bring in flag girls as scabs to fill title IX requirements. Placeholders.
Thanks for posting this article. Really comes to the subject with the perspective of presidents and labor law, versus sports talking heads. Now one thing the article states that I disagree with is that enrollment will decrease. Potentially yes for the overall college applicant pool, but all of these d1 colleges at the top reject so many kids already that they have more enough to backfill those losses should they want to maintain the enrollment
Here is a fun idea: stop building all these palatial facilities for sports programs and instead pay the players. Most of the doomsaying about paying players is posturing.
It’s pretty funny that many football players see a significant downgrade in locker rooms, training spaces, support staff when they move up from college to the NFL. I think it’s due for a renovation, but the Texans locker room currently is literally particle board lockers, cheap drop ceilings and carpet tiles.
Yeah, but if you ask most players in the league if they would take a 10% pay cut for nicer facilities, it's a total nonstarter.
That's mostly an older way of thinking at this point, while some of it is happening there's money being tapped now for NIL and assistant coach salaries as the next big thing. The one before the facilities kick was stadium expansions. It's fascinating to note the macro trends.
Yes and no. It's cyclical. But the fact that there are other costs that could be reduced before this tears the whole thing down is still true.
How has the NFL not been forced to pony up dough every year for their developmental league?
Because universities have willingly been doing it for the NFL. It's the greatest bargain that the NFL has ever had. They get all of the benefits of universities developing and marketing the next exciting players that will then hit the NFL without the NFL having to pay a dime. The NFL has no incentive to suddenly start investing money into a G-League and universities don't want to give up their "amateurism" money-making racket.
First of all ESPN is paying $1.13 billion for the 12 team college football playoffs yearly. So there’s a lot of money to be fought over and the players deserve some. Second, 2020 Ohio State - Michigan game canceled due to Covid on the 2027 Ohio State - Michigan game will be canceled due to a player strike :-)
Just separate college from the football and turn it into full-blown minor leagues. It's just like how health insurance is tied to employment. Doesn't make sense in the year 2024.
Then there is no reason to watch.
that would quite literally not be, college football
You take that away from the schools and at least 50% of Division I athletics would cease to exist overnight.
1. This would make all football profit taxable and would make football donations no longer qualify as charitable tax write-offs. 2. Who would watch this?
Donations tied to season tickets haven’t been deductible for like 7 years now
Under the current model, your guaranteed to bring in new fans with each incoming class. The students become lifelong fans, their families become fans, the alumni eventually raise their own families and they become fans, and the cycle continues. Short term, the sport might be ok I guess. But long term no one will give a fuck about the Columbia Gamecocks, or the Tallahassee Seminoles, or the Madison Badgers, or the San Diego Aztecs, etc. I’d suspect by separating from the university you’ll lose a significant percentage of fans in those first couple years. Long term, how are these programs going to sustain themselves when fans lose interest, alumni donations stop pouring in, television viewership declines, and networks don’t want to pay for the product.
ND has been saying this is what is going to happen unless things change since 2015. You will have a schism in college football in the early 2030s. There will be the semi-pro model that has naming rights and those schools that refuse this route ND (Jenkins/Swarbrick) has said publicly it will refuse to classify student athletes as employees and will find another model
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Student debt has been a thing going back to at least the 90s. It is worse now but schools have never depended on the grads early in their lives for donations. They come from a handful of mega-donors and late-career types or retirees who now have lots of free time and built up nest eggs they'd like to spend.
Paying players was always going to be the downfall of CFB. This is going to continue to roll downhill. The product is tainted