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Comment by Overtonwindow | Hacker News Reader

MY favorite are the exorbitant salaries paid to sports faculty, even when the sports program is loses money.

The universities that have highly paid coaches are the ones with premier, highly successful programs and earn way more from ticket sales, broadcast revenues, and merchandise than the coach is paid. It's like any other business (and it most definitely is a business), you need to pay well to attract the best talent.

If this article (https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/03/the-ma...) is any guide, the money made by the athletic department mostly goes to the athletic department and not to funding anything else useful.

I would agree, but dispute the claim that athletic scholarships are not "useful." Most collegiate athletes do not progress to professional careers in their sport. Their education (at least in theory) prepares them to be contributors to society after they graduate.

Athletics is an "auxilliary enterprise" at most educational institutions. It's self-funding, thanks to alumni donations and a few high-revenue sports (basketball and football for most, maybe hockey in some areas) that fund scholarships in all the non-revenue sports like rowing, golf, track and field, etc.

People like to gripe when the football coach makes more than the university president, but the football program funds that, scholarships for the players, and much more.

Right, in RHode Island the highest paid state employee is the URI basketball coach. However, only like 3 percent or something is actually paid by the state.

> Their education (at least in theory) prepares them to be contributors to society after they graduate.

That assumption seems to be in doubt.

https://www.sbnation.com/college-football/2014/7/9/5885433/n...

http://www.stanforddaily.com/2011/03/09/1046687/

https://sports.vice.com/en_us/article/vvan54/how-much-is-a-d...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/13/sports/13cnd-auburn.html?m...

http://www.npr.org/2012/11/17/165345780/online-courses-keep-...

No, most sports programs have highly paid coaches, and very few (4/250 or so) sports programs are even revenue-neutral. Most are in the red and are subsidized by fees charged to the students.

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