Here’s a category in which the UH athletics department leads the nation: The growth in the general funds subsidy needed to keep the athletics program afloat.
This little surprise tucked away in a table of numbers at the bottom of a USA Today story this week on subsidies required by college athletic programs.
The University of Hawaii had the largest rate of growth between 2005-2008 in the percentage of general university funds going to support the athletic department. The athletic department’s subsidy rose from 9.4% of its total budget to 26.3%, for a percentage change of 16.9%.
Data for the story were taken from financial reports submitted to the NCAA.
The story includes a link to a searchable database by school and by year.
And if you didn’t happen to watch Insights on PBS Hawaii last night, you missed economist Carl Bonham advising that “you can’t cut yourself out of this deficit”. Unfortunately, the program is not yet available via the station’s “Video on Demand” service.
The budget shortfall is simply too large to be covered by cuts in services or even reducing the size of the government, Bonham said, although the latter may be a longer term goal.
Bonham said he favored income tax hikes on upper income taxpayers, those who can afford to pay more in taxes and still make maintain their current level of routine expenditures. Although the general excise tax weighs allows “exporting” a share of the tax onto visitors, it has more impact on lower income residents who might curtail spending due to a tax hike, although to some extent that can be mitigated through low income or earned income tax credits.
Rep. Marcus Oshiro was pretty grim in discussing the budget, saying everything has to be on the table this session, from cuts to taxes.
The State of Washington is also going into a 60-day legislative session with a looming $2.6 billion deficit. I don’t know why I keep checking in on their situation. Misery loves company?
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interesting topic — seems that the arrangement that UH athletics has with the stadium might impact any analysis on any “taking” from the general fund — I wonder if this has been factored in
http://sports.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/20090513/SPORTS0201/905130381&template=UHSports
also it seems your headline should read that we are #1 in growth of subsidy — as confusing as the numbers are in that poorly written USA Today article are — I could not deduce that we have the #1 subsidy
You are correct. It’s our rate of increase that is tops in the country.
I found the info confusing as well; I read the post and then the article and it seemed at first thr assertion was that UH has the biggest increase in consumption of university funds, up to 20+% of ALL university funds. YIKES!! Then I realized the baseline was the athletics budget, not the university’s.
It would be useful to know how much of the total Manoa budget that subsidy comprises AND how much of it comes directly from fees on students If any) as opposed to the “general” fund pocket. These comparisons might permit us to draw some conclusions about the relative value of athletics v. academics, at least in the eyes of UH administrators.