The Cost to Compete for Private Schools

[Water Pony]

For all you Policy Wonks and Finance Majors, here is an article on the cost to compete with private schools like Gonzaga, Marquette paying more to be contenders. Go to link at end. Excellent article with several tables and analysis

SI: Wednesday January 19, 2005 3:16PM

In 2003, Tom Crean led Marquette to its first Final Four since 1977.

Tom Crean was already Marquette University's highest-paid employee when, after he led the Golden Eagles to the Final Four in the spring of 2003, the school made him one of the nation's highest-paid basketball coaches -- and kept him away from larger, publicly funded suitors. As he drove to the press conference on April 22 where he would announce his new deal with Marquette, the man waiting to open the gate of the campus' restricted Jesuit-residence parking lot (the most convenient place to park for the event, but one to which even a BMOC like Crean didn't have access) was none other than school president Rev. Robert A. Wild.

Sure, the corny symbolism of that scene -- academic subservience to intercollegiate athletics -- may have been thicker than the smell of brewery hops wafting over Milwaukee. But the concept of a coach as a university's highest-paid employee is old hat. According to the latest data available -- from the 2003 fiscal year -- no fewer than 15 private-school basketball coaches were ranked No. 1 on their school's payroll sheet. "People tend to latch on to those symbols," Father Wild said with a laugh, recollecting the parking-lot moment. "I just turned the key to get the job done; I'd happily do that for anyone, under the circumstances."

For private universities, especially those that don't compete in Division I-A football, D-I basketball is the sport in which they have a fighting chance against the state-school behemoths. Marquette is the lone school outside of the six traditional "BCS" football conferences -- Big East, SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, ACC, Pac-10 -- to earn a Final Four bid this decade. The 14-2 Golden Eagles entered the latest Associated Press poll this week at No. 25, while Spokane, Wash.-based Gonzaga (13-3), the darlings of the Northwest, stood at No. 11.

Football-playing privateers like Boston College, Duke, Syracuse and Vanderbilt -- all with annual school revenues of more than $500 million -- have little trouble shelling out the coaching salaries necessary to keep playing high-profile hoops. But major-conference outsiders like the Golden Eagles (11,000 students, Conference USA) and the Zags (6,100 students, West Coast Conference) must ante up a larger portion of their resources to retain their increasingly sought-after head coaches. And the schools don't chalk it up as an ugly economic reality; rather, they see it as a necessity to obtain national visibility for not just the athletic program, but the university as a whole.

It's a difficult task to analyze the finances of private schools, because the figures are just that: private. The schools are neither willing nor obligated to divulge the data, but thanks to the Chronicle of Education's Annual Executive Compensation Survey, as well as research by SI.com, we were able to review IRS 990 forms that require each private university to list its five highest-paid employees. Of the 15 that listed a basketball coach as No. 1, the percentage gap between the coach and the highest-paid academic administrator varied greatly. Marquette and Gonzaga were Nos. 1 and 2, with gaps near 300 percent, while Vanderbilt was 15th, with a margin of 110 percent.

continued at:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2005/w ... index.html

[SWC2010]

Good article, WP. Thanks. You might want to throw this article on the football board, as well...