Athletic Department Subsidies Controversy
Is Rutgers athletic program worth the money? That seems to be the question flying around after the faculty voted to overwhelmingly ask the Board of Governors to end subsidies to the athletic department. Upon closer inspection, though, this article from the Star-Ledger shows some evidence that the discussion might be overblown. The vote was taken by only 177 of the 910 faculty members of the School of Arts and Sciences. So, while it's obvious that the athletic department is losing support among the faculty, this is still a rather small sampling of the larger body of educators. Second, the largest subsidy was to the football team to the tune of 2.9 million dollars. The current budget calls for a reduction of that deficit by 1 million dollars this year. And Rutgers is paying over 1 million dollars less to employ Kyle Flood as the head coach as opposed to Greg Schiano. It seems to me that 1 million dollar reduction has been taken care of. The deficit was brought to light as a resu...