The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 30, 2004

At Some Colleges, Students Tax Themselves to Pay for Sports

As most college administrators have discovered, sports are not getting any cheaper. As a result, more institutions are turning to a captive audience to raise money: students.

And not just the students participating in sports. Students on several campuses, including four in the past three weeks, have voted to levy mandatory fees on themselves to help pay for athletics departments.

The practice is not uncommon at large universities in Division I-A of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, where students are required to pay athletics fees but are then admitted free to sports events. Now smaller colleges, where tickets are not quite as tough to get, are trying the same tactic.

In referenda, students on the University of Texas' Arlington and San Antonio campuses have just approved such fees, as have students at California Polytechnic University at San Luis Obispo. The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga had a similar vote scheduled last week, and California State University at Sacramento students vote on an arena complex this week.

At most colleges the fee pays for athletics scholarships, teams for women, and capital projects. Along with coaches' salaries, those recently have been the fastest-growing costs for athletics departments.

Athletics departments at "most public universities, because of shrinking state funds and increasing costs, have had to seek alternative sources of revenue," says Steve Sloan, athletics director at Chattanooga. In states including Florida, Georgia, and Texas, where public funds cannot be used for athletics, "student athletic fees have been the answer," he says. "In states like ours, where they do allow some funding for athletics, there have been so many budget cuts we've had to go to some kind of designated fee."

Fees Mean New Teams

At Arlington, students approved a hotly debated measure to add $2 per credit hour to their fees to pay for three new teams: football and women's golf and soccer. The measure is contingent on the university's raising outside funds to cover start-up costs for the three sports, which are likely to be expensive.

San Antonio students passed a fee increase of $34 per semester that will finance construction of a track-and-soccer stadium and renovation of the baseball stadium, and will create women's golf and soccer teams.

Sacramento State would charge each student $110 per semester to help pay for a $73-million arena. The building would also include recreational facilities like a movie theater and a bowling alley, and so would not be exclusively a varsity-sports project, like the others.

Chattanooga, which saw state support for sports cut by $820,000 last year and eliminated its men's track team as a result, is asking students for $75 per semester to restore the track team, increase funds for women's sports, and support an athletics department that officials say has the smallest budget in the Southern Conference.

Not all students at those colleges are happy about shelling out money for uniforms and per diems for their athletic classmates. The Cal Poly fee increase passed by just 53 percent to 47 percent, and the San Antonio vote came 14 months after students rejected a similar proposal. (At San Antonio less than 10 percent of those eligible voted in either referendum.)

At Chattanooga, students like Sara Beth Seay "don't understand why the English department doesn't get to ask, and why the theater people don't get to ask for anything," she told the Chattanooga Times Free Press. "I feel like the football program is a money pit. Other departments have to restructure to maintain their budgets, and so should athletics."

Mr. Sloan, the athletics director, responds that sports programs contribute to the university because of the attention they receive.

"In Division I programs, generally speaking, athletics is considered a major marketing tool of the university," he says. "It's the major connection to alumni, to your friend on the street, to the corporate community. At least 80 percent of your press coverage, both print and electronic, comes from athletes. There's no value you can put on that."

If the referendum fails and Chattanooga's Board of Trustees votes it down as well, "we're looking at a $500,000 problem," Mr. Sloan says.

Even if Chattanooga students fall in line with the national pattern, the athletics department won't be rich, he says, but it will be "happier poor."

Copyright © 2004 by The Chronicle of Higher Education