PhD Comics: Academic Salaries
phdcomics.com
phdcomics.com
In essence, this is comparing the average salary of the top 150 best-paid football coaches to the average for all academics. It would be interesting to see what the average of the top 150 academic salaries is.
Universities are only incidentally about knowledge and learning.
Please do not confuse the grant money draw that is research with either teaching or learning. Clearly they are part of it but money is the main driver.
Money is priority #1, that's why sports are so important.
Money is important to students as well, the bulk of the income their degree will generate depends on the reputation of the school, not on how much they actually know.
And that's when they are first entering the job market. After that first job, the only way college matters is through the relationships you built there. Obviously relationships you build at work matter more and more over time.
And here again sports is important in creating that image of tribal success that draws the people that you want to connect with, to make it far in life after college.
That's the way life and college work.
If you don't like this harsh and cynical money based game, go to a school that doesn't have a sports program and be a scholar. And if you do that, don't ever think about money.
If you do find yourself thinking about money, especially more then is needed to simply survive, then get an MBA... preferably from a school with a very successful sports program.
Only for non-entrepreneurial types.
I think for an entrepreneur (in whatever arena -- business, programming, scientific research), using college as a sort of pure, long-term investment in a general arsenal of facts and perspectives can actually pay off very nicely in the long run.
Time will tell if I'm right....
I think the focus on sports at US colleges says a lot about the US, rather than universities or the education system in general.
Furthermore, schools aren't making money on the backs of athletes, they're raising money. That money doesn't get redistributed to shareholders, it gets added to the endowment and spent on the university. If anything student-athletes should get an income tax credit on their first X dollars earned after college rather than a check, basically a modified form of the tax credit they would get for any other charitable contribution.
* There is tremendous pressure to juice for any athlete who hopes to go pro or even be competitive.
* People gamble heavily on collegiate athletics. Of course you have to worry about fixed games.
* Look at USC, Miami, or just about any major sports school: The players barely have to attend class to remain eligible.
* No, they're making money. Take a look at the salaries of coaches, athletic directors, and college presidents and think again. If universities cared about endowments, they'd spend the athletic dollars on academics, investing in contributions from future alumni.
I highly recommend "What's My Name, Fool!", specifically the section on collegiate athletics (page 230).
I'll check out the book though.
Try to get a million+ to finance the fencing team, or women's wrestling, or (har) ultimate frisbee, or any other worthwhile, but not extremely popular, sport. The 200 people you see on TV get a disproportionate amount of the funding.
From http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=510756 "Former bond managers David R. Mittelman and Maurice Samuels were paid $18 million and $16.9 million, respectively, for their work at Harvard Management Company (HMC), which invests the endowment. Jack R. Meyer, the firm’s former president, received $6 million for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2005."
Not that they don't deserve it.
At a major sports school, athletes get tons of perks - from scheduling classes early, private tutoring available in any subject if needed, room & board, clothing & athletic gear, personal medical trainers & Doctors, etc.
Of course, it is in the athletic department/University's interest to take very good care of their players -- both for the ability to bring in new talent, and also for the continued exceptional performance of the players on the field.
All that being said, there are many sports out of the typical 29 at a D-I University, that are not profitable and not generating significant revenue. Typically, from all the empirical data I've seen, that would be every sport except for Football & Basketball.
So there is a bit of 'wealth distribution' as players in sports that aren't significant money-makers still have access to full-tuition scholarships.
But I'm not sure what point the comic is trying to make, really. If this imbalance in pay pushed top academics to drop their career and switch to coaching football, I could understand the argument that it's harmful. I highly doubt that's the case.
Also, it's far better to make $3 million in 3 years than it is to do so in 30.
Or are we applying corporate-compensation logic, in which all the money that a company brings in is credited to the CEO, who promptly gives himself a lavish raise?
There's a ton of downside to this, I know, but I don't think that universities should be regulating what sort of money their students bring in.
Another way to look at it is that the university is 'paying' them with a free education, and 4 years with no financial obligations. Depending on the school, that has the potential for massive financial equivalents.
That said, let me propose a deal for you: Instead of being paid for your next four years of work, your employer gives the cash to a university. In return, the university gives you a four-year scholarship with a value equal to your deferred salary plus X%. Note that the scholarship is nontransferable, it cannot be deferred, and you cannot stretch it out over more than four years, unless the university agrees to give you a single extra "red-shirt" year. Also, if you quit your job, you lose the scholarship, so don't expect to be a full-time student unless you're really good at multitasking and don't need a lot of sleep.
How large does X have to be before you accept this offer? My guess is that it is considerably higher than zero.
If I were a high-school kid coming from a family with very little ability to help pay for college I'd say that sounds like fantastic deal.
Some of these guys come from financially destitute situations and will leave school the minute they hear NFL so they can support the rest of their family.
Preferably, in fact, these unquestionably professional athletes would stop pretending to be students at all, with some sort of hybrid university-sports structure. (keeping in mind that this graph uses the top 150 college coaches; schools like Yale and Stanford unquestionably have true student athletes)
MIT has one D1 sport, rowing. I'm not sure whether they give athletic scholarships for it, but without bothering to check, I suspect not.
"Stanford has won the NACDA Director's Cup for Division I, awarded annually to the college or university with the most success in collegiate athletics, for 14 consecutive years (1994-95 to 2007-08)."
Some people just don't care about sports.
The problem is that high-level college football and college basketball, in particular, have grown from amateur sports into de facto professional leagues, with athletes who are grossly underpaid relative to the revenue gathered by the sport they play.
I'm in favor of separating de facto professional sports away from the truly amateur sports, but I think there's value in having amateur sports. (bias alert: I'm an amateur athlete who spends a lot of his time and money playing sports, and coaches a club ultimate team.)
The same thing happens to a lesser extent with basketball, but for the most part other athletes of other sports have to earn there way in to school like everyone else.
I don't think UF is really very different than a lot of the other major football schools. Most of them are in pretty moderately sized cities, especially in comparison to cities with professional teams. Green Bay is the only NFL city that's college town sized.
I remember when pg wrote his essay about what messages cities send, the only message I could I think of that Gainesville sends to me is something along the lines of "You should watch gator football." It was a harsh realization, because I do like it here, and now I really wonder if this the right place for me.
Good football players increase the prestige of the school. Not just athletically but also academically. At least to the common man or hr person.