Champagne Wishes and Caviar Dreams

So you went from a cute notion that your senior colleague’s office was shared with janitors to the realization that “seniority has its privileges”. Very educational day for a new faculty.

The best story I have heard of was about a Nobel laureate demanding (and receiving) a salary in excess of that U coach’s wages. Of course by now he is long since left in the dust by the raising fortunes of the academics of applied concussion.

a personal assistant to take care of many details!

My dream perk:

Second office with 8′ x 16′ conference table and 12 chairs; wall-mounted 60″ HDTV with laptop connection, videoconference capabilities, & digital cable TV service; leather recliner and reading table; and NO telephone.

I would want my office to function like the Room of Requirement from the Harry Potter books — people can only find it when they really need it.

An office with real walls that go to the ceiling instead of the ancient cube dividers which are so warped we can’t shut our (fake) doors any more.  A desktop computer IN ADDITION to the chintzy little laptop that we are allocated, with enough power and disk space to run as a server.

What I would like: my own parking space so I don’t have to get there at 7:30 each morning, fully compensated travel, comfortable office furniture for me and my visitors, a place to eat in the building, windows that open and shut, and my home internet paid for since I use it for work.
What I have seen: endowed chairs get their travel paid for, professors get to teach what they want when they want, top administration have their own parking spaces and very comfortable furniture, some administration get their cell phones paid for. I have not heard of any unique perks, but maybe the recipients keep quiet about them. ;-)

Travel funds?  Videoconferencing?  I’d be happy if my department had a working printer.

Henry Adams

Most of the things listed here, big screen tvs, furniture and other creature comforts , makes me wonder that don’t these people have these things at home or is their home that bad that they wish to make their office their”home”? I can relate more to the people that do not want to be interrupted, one way telephones etc. The perks or things are just more hassle. I clean my toilet at home so I wouldn’t want to clean it in my office too.
. The travel I can understand but that leads to even more bickering, what is prestigious and what is not etc.
Things that facilitate one’s job are not perks.

I want some of Google’s benefits for my staff:
http://www.google.com/intl/en/jobs/lifeatgoogle/benefits/#bwbb

Um, a living wage…?

I would like a private office.  I often have to meet with students privately to discuss very personal matters.  It would be nice not to have to either find another space to meet with a student or kick my grad assistants out of the office.  My own fax line would be nice too.  My supervisor is in another building across a quad and it doesn’t work well to have to go over to his office to send and recieve faxes.

Universities that depend so heavily on football for their reputations hardly deserve the name universities. 

Let’s hope the trend continues:  Fewer and fewer athletic donors contributing less and less each year.  Perhaps our failing economy can accomplish the heretofore impossible task of exerting some control on Division 1 athletics.

The coaches Mr. Smith worries so much about had better hurry up and leave FSU if they want to rake in their millions before the sagging fortunes of big time athletics closes them out.  Let’s just hope the collapse occurs rapidly.

It doesn’t.  You can only deduct what is in excess of the value received, and the university determines how much the ticket guarantee is worth. Your tax deduction is what is in excess of that. 

But realize what you are saying. Except for a handful of privates (Notre Dame, BYU, USC, Duke, Vandy, Boston C, etc.), the BCS conferences consist of all the major state Carnegie research universities! So that means that the only public universities funded by states to do research for their reputation are also big-time athletics schools! Perhaps that contributes to  huge and growing gap between pay of full profs at private universities vs. state U., resulting in a brain drain that’s turning even our flagship U’s into party schools with streaming video “learning.”

Time to grow up. Universities shouldn’t be fielding football teams in the first place. It’s never mentioned int he mission statement of any university. It detracts from the academic mission. If it is a way to make money the operations should be commercialized. Hire and pay professional footballers.

I entered college 48 years ago on a football scholarship.  Without that scholarship I would not have been able to attend college.  I was the first in my family to graduate from high school and the first to graduate from college.  That scholarship changed my life and gave me opportunities that I would not have otherwise had.  I have now been a college professor for 37 years and giving back some of what I received.  For me personally, college football was a blessing!!!

Probably still is a blessing for those who actually are going to college to learn, but that is clearly the exception for any player in NCAA Division I these days.  The difference between today and 37 years ago is the professionalization of the collegiate game.  I remember when players actually played both defense and offense (Roman Gabriel was a linebacker as well as a quarterback when in college).  I also remember when teams got along with just a few coaches, who by the way lived in the kind of homes the regular faculty did.  I even remember a head coach who had a Ph.D.  I’ll never forget that when Bill Dooley arrived at UNC-CH, one of the first things he did was forbid any member of the football squad playing baseball (kept them out of Spring practice), depriving several multi-sports athletes of something they clearly loved doing (not to mention stripping the baseball team of some of its talent). 

Despite what i am about to post, I think that athletics, including football, has a very valuable place in colleges and universities.  Also, please don’t interpret the remainder as necessarily an attack on “big time” college football at tier one schools.  My problem, particularly as a current resident of Florida, is with how the vast majority of state schools pay for their athletic programs, including football.  The idea that media revenue, ticket sales and donations cover the cost of even football is a myth.  Florida is nothing more than a specific example of what goes on nationwide. 

Reductions in state support for
higher education, increases in tuition and fees, and reduction of university
budgets have become the norm in Florida, except for athletic budgets.   Athletic
budgets exhibit all of aspects of a socialist economy.  Deficit spending, government bailouts, and
taxes on users can all be found.

According to the USA Today database (http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/ncaa-finances.htm)
FSU’s athletic program had a deficit
each year 2008 to 2010.  The total three
year deficit was $12,883,128.  Prior to
fiscal year 2008, when the NCAA finally caught up with Coach Bowden’s creative
academic retention tactics, FSU athletics generated a revenue surplus and
probably will do so again.  Deficit
spending on athletics is not limited to FSU. 
From 2005 through 2010 seven of the nine NCAA Division I athletic
programs at Florida’s universities had deficits.

Athletics at the Univeristy of Central Florida and Florida A & M received
yearly government support for their athletic programs from 2005 through 2010,
and each had a budget deficit three of the six years.  From 2005 thought 2010 U of Florida athletics generated a
$37.5 million profit.  Given this amount
of profit why did Gator athletics, from UF’s own report, receive yearly direct
government support of between $1.3 and $1.9 million during that time? 

Florida’s universities tax their
students to support athletics.   In 2010 student fees at U of F were 2.1% ($2,507,391)
of its athletic revenue and were 9% ($6,919,449) of FSU’s, 33% ($13,026,289) of
the University of South Florida’s, 44% ($17,466,918) of UCF’s, 45% ($4,200,774) of FAMUs, 50% ($4,256,446) of
Florida Gulf Coast’s,  55% ($8,877,456) of Florida Atlantic’s, 69%
($5,4889,678) of U of North Florida’s and 72% ($15,635,778) of Florida International’s.

There is frequent concern voiced by
the public, politicians, students, and university leaders concerning yearly
increases in tuition and fees.  While
university academic programs are being criticized more and more often in public
for lack of cost effectiveness, the athletic programs at our state universities
have an apparent pass on what, in other parts of the university, would be
counted as egregious lack of fiduciary responsibility.

 Pave the field for parking, which is a particular problem at UF.

The athletic financial issues at Florida State pail in perspective to the financial burden forced one students at the non-revenue producing Division 1 schools. 10% of the Florida State budget is comprised of subsidies (athletic fees and other university support), with the athletic fee being $215 per year. 

One example from our study of selected D1 universities – the subsidized percentage of the athletic budget is 92%, meaning only 8% of the cost of operating the athletic department is generated by athletics. Last year athletic ticket sales at this institution were $31,000 and contributions to athletics were $33,000 – lest than 1% of athletic expenses. The majority of the revenue generated is by the basketball team getting paid appearance fees to play at the major schools. Of the $9,000 tuition last year at this public institution, approximately $1,200 was allocated to the athletic department (15% of tuition). The institution came in dead last in the conference all sports competition.

It is a commuter institution, and a recent poll of graduates indicated that 77% had never attended an athletic event at their alma mater. Our estimates are that students there graduates with average debt  of over $29,200. Out estimates is that slightly over 20% of this debt is attributable to to athletic fees, so a majority of this institution’s graduates and non graduates will be paying for athletics in which they never attended or participated through student loans.

Right. If you’ve an economic choice between equal rights and access for women, and football–remember, that there are no women’s college football teams, and that there’s a “football exception” for Title IX–choose…football!

What  recovery are you talking about?

This is the fourth “summer of recovery.”

Winston Blake apparently doesn’t know how to make any sort of reasoned argument, free of juvenile invective. But he apparently does know how to press the “Like” button on his own comment.

I would gladly attend a BCSA support group, but only if I could be assured of the vulgarity and yahooism.

I have a suggestion: Why not ask the BigTen Athletic Departments to contribute a few million so that the Network can highlight “scholarly work” with “higher quality” (whatever that means) . As the chart below shows, the conferences’ athletic departments combined for about $100 million in profits.

School                   Total Athletic Department      
                            Revenue           Expenses                Income
Illinois              57,539,367.00     55,723,771.00          1,815,596.00
Indiana             70,172,641.00     64,878,825.00          5,293,816.00
Iowa                 92,903,555.00     87,607,487.00          5,296,068.00
Michigan           122,486,490.00     95,836,991.00      26,649,499.00
Michigan State     80,963,182.00     67,450,913.00     13,512,269.00
Minnesota         78,924,683.00     78,924,683.00              0.00
Nebraska          83,679,756.00     78,509,148.00           5,170,608.00
Northwestern     56,214,293.00     56,214,293.00              0.00
Ohio State     131,815,819.00     113,184,855.00         18,630,964.00
Penn State     116,118,026.00     84,498,339.00           31,619,687.00
Purdue             66,066,303.00     59,293,193.00           6,773,110.00
Wisconsin     93,594,766.00        92,939,345.00            655,421.00
(http://businessofcollegesports.com/2012/03/19/most-profitable-athletic-departments-big-ten/)