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um programs being cut

argh!

Well-known member
DONOR
sounds like athletics might be a good place to start:

"The acute problems may call for unprecedented solutions, such as a smaller subsidy for athletics and one central university in Montana, Cook said. A 2015 analysis by a local legislator and economist showed UM's Athletics Department would run a deficit of some $8.6 million without state subsidies; a separate report also showed UM athletics supported itself more than any other school in the Big Sky Conference."
 
“Athletics” don’t run a deficit. What causes the deficit is Title IX and the requirement to have a number of money-sucking non revenue sports offered.
 
AZGrizFan said:
“Athletics” don’t run a deficit. What causes the deficit is Title IX and the requirement to have a number of money-sucking non revenue sports offered.
Not to mention the Dennison initiated accounting creativity which sucks money from athletics to other areas of the University. Many, many examples; the AD gets nothing from concessions at the games; that all goes to the food service. UM is in the top 60 nationally for logo, gear and license sales; that all goes to the bookstore. AD pays rent for facilties, even when the capital came from the AD and AD donations. Gameday parking and tailgate fees? Nada. While the AD pays for gameday services, security, etc. Maybe that is good for the University, but it makes for sqewed numbers relative to other universities with conventional accounting practices.
 
kemajic said:
AZGrizFan said:
“Athletics” don’t run a deficit. What causes the deficit is Title IX and the requirement to have a number of money-sucking non revenue sports offered.
Not to mention the Dennison initiated accounting creativity which sucks money from athletics to other areas of the University. Many, many examples; the AD gets nothing from concessions at the games; that all goes to the food service. UM is in the top 60 nationally for logo, gear and license sales; that all goes to the bookstore. AD pays rent for facilties, even when the capital came from the AD and AD donations. Gameday parking and tailgate fees? Nada. While the AD pays for gameday services, security, etc. Maybe that is good for the University, but it makes for sqewed numbers relative to other universities with conventional accounting practices.

Good god, I knew it was bad, but had no idea it was THAT bad. Perhaps if I lived closer and wasn’t too far removed to understand... :cool:
 
The athletic department has been having cuts. Special private donations to the athletic dept. are being called on more and more.

Private donations will cover tuition for football in Missoula this summer. All of them, or maybe just all scholarship ones.

Unfortunately, some of the cuts have included things like this. No scholarships ($1,000 each) for the cheerleaders or dance team, as of several years ago. No funding for the band to go to the Griz-Cat game in Bozeman last fall. The band raised a good chunk of money and was able to go. No funding for the dance team and band to go to the Big Sky basketball tourney this year. The dance team raised over $6,000 to go. The band didn't go.

The dance team was able to go to the ncaa game in Wichita, because the ncaa paid for that.

AZGriz is at least partially right, if not completely. Football certainly pays its own way, and is a net winner if you assume that a large chunk of the donations for GSA and buildings are driven by football.
 
AZGrizFan said:
“Athletics” don’t run a deficit. What causes the deficit is Title IX and the requirement to have a number of money-sucking non revenue sports offered.

*Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner.
 
PlayerRep said:
The athletic department has been having cuts. Special private donations to the athletic dept. are being called on more and more.
That was Dennison's strategy; it started there. He knew raising money from athletics donors was easier than expanding the Foundation giving, especially when the programs were winning. He put pressure on the AD by diverting revenue, which required the AD to go after donors to maintain. Of course, his motivation was to fund his legacy through campus buildings, which now leaves us grossly overbuilt. Hogan resisted; he wanted the money reinvested within the AD; we know what happened to him.
 
Good heavens. You can 'hate' Title IX, but this has been a financial reality for forty years now. All sports minus football, regardless of gender are money suckers. Some work at a near break even margin (men and womens basketball) but most cost more than what they produce. But I don't care. Complain about the mechanism to calculate participation, fine, but the law isn't going anywhere. Athletic departments have known about those issues for decades now.

The issue is the declining desire by states to subsidize athletic departments. This is true at the high school level as well. Right or wrong, financing athletic departments is becoming more and more privatized or directly funded by the year. 6.5 million for athletics or education? I don't think it is a hard equation to figure out where tax money probably should go.

Blame a lot of things, but title IX is not the issue here. University systems are bloated public entities that got fat living off the trough of public funds for decades. This isn't a missoula issue, it is a college issue that permeates every state. Hard choices need to be made, and unfortunately everyone is going to have to give at the altar this time. Either you concede that public post secondary education is worthwhile and states are willing to fully fund its whole mission, or you find other ways to pass off the cuts (higher tuition) or you cut things.

Dennison band aided things for twenty years. Things are going to get ugly at the UM, and I don't think athletics should be spared the knife either.
 
kemajic said:
PlayerRep said:
The athletic department has been having cuts. Special private donations to the athletic dept. are being called on more and more.
That was Dennison's strategy; it started there. He knew raising money from athletics donors was easier than expanding the Foundation giving, especially when the programs were winning. He put pressure on the AD by diverting revenue, which required the AD to go after donors to maintain. Of course, his motivation was to fund his legacy through campus buildings, which now leaves us grossly overbuilt. Hogan resisted; he wanted the money reinvested within the AD; we know what happened to him.

i'm curious how much money is siphoned off this way per year? while it probably isn't an insignificant amount, i'd be surprised if we were talking more than a million bucks a year.
 
I think UM's licensing and rights revenue is $2 - $3 million per year. Not sure what's in that category. i.e. apparel, etc. and what else? Not sure that it goes to the bookstore. Not sure where the media/advertising contract money goes. Assume the athletic dept. gets that. Isn't that over $1 million now.
 
"In 1992, the state picked up 76 percent of the tab for a college education; it's picking up 38 percent in 2018."
 
argh! said:
sounds like athletics might be a good place to start:

"The acute problems may call for unprecedented solutions, such as a smaller subsidy for athletics and one central university in Montana, Cook said. A 2015 analysis by a local legislator and economist showed UM's Athletics Department would run a deficit of some $8.6 million without state subsidies; a separate report also showed UM athletics supported itself more than any other school in the Big Sky Conference."

I wouldn't actually call this an "analysis". It was the view of a liberal Missoula legislator. He's a retired professor. 75 years ago. A blogger. Went to Swarthmore (not exactly a big athletic school, ha).

Lots of the posts on egriz have as much or more analysis and facts as what this guy thought or thinks of athletics, in my view.
 
What about all jobs created at UM on football game days. Such as concession and bookstore workers. Then Missoula itself. Hotels, restaurants, gas stations. It goes on and on.
 
Spanky2 said:
Are we going to end up with one university in Montana?
Do you remember when they each took in two of the 4 smaller schools and called it good? Unfortunately if they are really serious about fiscal responsibility leg. will have to start closing them probably in this order northern , western and last MSUB. Tech would never close because it’s a cash cow. Year in year out they send 100 tech grads to work, these kids get recruited and the starting salaries are phenomenal I’m talking $150,000 to start for the cream of the crop. There’s thousands of those alums who are working and running global energy companies and look at what they have built and are building.

I heard the new turf was paid for by one donation from the pres of an oil co. The stadium is nicer then some BSC dumps. The stands are sited so you have an incredible view toward the pintlars and fleecer mountain in the late afternoon sun.

Technical fields are in demand and the U is traditionally not a high tech school. What would happen as a last resort before making us a one school state is they would get rid of duplicate programs, which would make the college and social experience pretty dull. With the way the national economy recovered and has been steadily on the rise for at least 10 years, why hasn’t that translated into more money for colleges? It’s seems the Ivy’s keep getting huge donations from all the young tech billionaires (We really need to cultivate guys like Messina. Lol.) They really got it goin on and well I guess that’s why they are the Ivy’s. Lol. Good friend always tells people that he graduated law from the Harvard of the West.
 
Grizfan-24 said:
Good heavens. You can 'hate' Title IX, but this has been a financial reality for forty years now. All sports minus football, regardless of gender are money suckers. Some work at a near break even margin (men and womens basketball) but most cost more than what they produce. But I don't care. Complain about the mechanism to calculate participation, fine, but the law isn't going anywhere. Athletic departments have known about those issues for decades now.

The issue is the declining desire by states to subsidize athletic departments. This is true at the high school level as well. Right or wrong, financing athletic departments is becoming more and more privatized or directly funded by the year. 6.5 million for athletics or education? I don't think it is a hard equation to figure out where tax money probably should go.

Blame a lot of things, but title IX is not the issue here. University systems are bloated public entities that got fat living off the trough of public funds for decades. This isn't a missoula issue, it is a college issue that permeates every state. Hard choices need to be made, and unfortunately everyone is going to have to give at the altar this time. Either you concede that public post secondary education is worthwhile and states are willing to fully fund its whole mission, or you find other ways to pass off the cuts (higher tuition) or you cut things.

Dennison band aided things for twenty years. Things are going to get ugly at the UM, and I don't think athletics should be spared the knife either.

So just quoting this post cus I don’t want it to get ignored. I don’t know anywhere near enough to even argue any of these points and not just because I’m too far away to know what’s going on. I’ve never really been interested in the political and financial parts of the U and am quite frankly very uneducated in that area. I do believe 24 brings up some real good points that worry me about the future of our school though. I’d like some of you “know it alls” to give more of your opinions on what 24 says. I believe this is what PR was referencing with his numbers. Seems to me that title IX probably isn’t that big a deal as other issues but it’s the easy bandwagon argument by a bunch of football loving men.
 
alabamagrizzly said:
Grizfan-24 said:
Good heavens. You can 'hate' Title IX, but this has been a financial reality for forty years now. All sports minus football, regardless of gender are money suckers. Some work at a near break even margin (men and womens basketball) but most cost more than what they produce. But I don't care. Complain about the mechanism to calculate participation, fine, but the law isn't going anywhere. Athletic departments have known about those issues for decades now.

The issue is the declining desire by states to subsidize athletic departments. This is true at the high school level as well. Right or wrong, financing athletic departments is becoming more and more privatized or directly funded by the year. 6.5 million for athletics or education? I don't think it is a hard equation to figure out where tax money probably should go.

Blame a lot of things, but title IX is not the issue here. University systems are bloated public entities that got fat living off the trough of public funds for decades. This isn't a missoula issue, it is a college issue that permeates every state. Hard choices need to be made, and unfortunately everyone is going to have to give at the altar this time. Either you concede that public post secondary education is worthwhile and states are willing to fully fund its whole mission, or you find other ways to pass off the cuts (higher tuition) or you cut things.

Dennison band aided things for twenty years. Things are going to get ugly at the UM, and I don't think athletics should be spared the knife either.

So just quoting this post cus I don’t want it to get ignored. I don’t know anywhere near enough to even argue any of these points and not just because I’m too far away to know what’s going on. I’ve never really been interested in the political and financial parts of the U and am quite frankly very uneducated in that area. I do believe 24 brings up some real good points that worry me about the future of our school though. I’d like some of you “know it alls” to give more of your opinions on what 24 says. I believe this is what PR was referencing with his numbers. Seems to me that title IX probably isn’t that big a deal as other issues but it’s the easy bandwagon argument by a bunch of football loving men.

I only brought up Title IX to point out the distinction between ALL athletics (which get subsidized) and FOOTBALL, which would not, if looked at on its own.
 
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