Survey: OU students blasé about athletics

A new survey, officially released today by the Washington, D.C.-based Center for College Affordability and Productivity, seems to show that if given a choice, many OU students would spend less of their general-fee money on subsidizing varsity athletics.

And though OU, like other universities, touts intercollegiate sports as a recruiting tool, the survey also suggests that most students pay little attention to the athletics program when deciding whether to enroll.

In response to the survey, OU officials noted that the study is based on only about 1,000 responses, and argued that other evidence counters its conclusions.

At a news conference held Thursday, however, OU distinguished professor of economics Richard Vedder, who heads the think tank that conducted the survey, suggested the poll points to a serious disconnect between students’ priorities and OU’s readiness to subsidize athletics. He said OU offers a good case study for the issue of college athletics spending nationally.

Universities “are in the knowledge business,” Vedder said. Yet in defending their decisions to subsidize a non-academic activity like varsity sports, he charged, university officials “engage in deception and withhold evidence.”

The new study, titled “Funding the Arms Race: A Case Study of Student Athletic Fees,” was co-authored by center administrative director and research associate Matthew Denhart, and OU assistant professor of sports administration David Ridpath.

The survey was made available online to all 19,843 undergraduate and graduate students who were enrolled at OU’s Athens campus fall quarter. Of these, 1,175 answered at least some questions on the survey, and 910 filled it out completely.

THE RESULTS SEEM to show that many students don’t realize how much of their money is going to subsidize intercollegiate athletics. And if they had their druthers, the poll suggests, they probably wouldn’t pay as much for sports programs.

Most students polled – 84.1 percent – knew they pay a general fee on top of tuition, but an even higher percentage – 86.2 – could not correctly identify the size of the fee ($531 per quarter for a full-time student). About 32 percent guessed high, and more than 54 percent guessed low.

When given a list of eight student-activity areas that get general-fee money, and asked to guess how they actually rank in terms of general-fee funding, students tended to correctly identify athletics as coming in first. (In Fiscal Year 2010, athletics got about $12.7 million from general fees, or about 41 percent of the total, compared to other recipients such as Campus Recreation and Baker Center Auxiliaries.) With eight possible answers, more than 32 percent of poll respondents correctly put athletics at number one.

When asked to rank the eight general-fee recipients in terms of the respondents’ own spending priorities, however, almost 71 percent put athletics somewhere on the bottom half of the list; 19.8 percent put it in last place, while only 5.6 percent chose it as their top spending priority.

“Although (athletics) receives the most funding, the majority of students felt it was unimportant to them,” noted Denhart.

As mentioned, one of the perennial rationales for spending on athletics is that a good sports program makes a college more attractive to students.

Becky Watts, chief of staff for OU President Roderick McDavis, cited this factor in an e-mail comment on the survey, arguing that sports play an important part in creating the image of OU in the minds of potential students.

“When most students choose Ohio University for matriculation, most do so for the entire experience which includes many things such as an outstanding academic program, an opportunity to get engaged in student organizations, study abroad, to interact with faculty, staff and other students who will expose them to new ideas and thoughts,” Watts maintained. “Having a Division I athletic program assists in the recruitment of students who prefer attending a comprehensive university, with prospective students citing sports as a top factor in their awareness of Ohio University.”

The survey results, however, seem to especially blast this notion.

Asked to rank how important a role OU’s “intercollegiate athletics reputation” played in their decision to enroll, the students who answered the survey said overwhelmingly that it had little impact.

Only 6.6 percent called it “extremely important” or “important,” while 24.8 percent called it “unimportant,” and a whopping 53.7 percent called it “extremely unimportant.”

ASKED HOW HE thought students’ parents – many of whom bear much of the cost of their children’s college education – would respond to the survey, Vedder said he suspects the attitude toward sports would be even chillier.

“I would think the parents would be even more militant on this issue,” the economist speculated. “If I were to guess, (the negative reaction) might be even stronger.”

WATTS QUESTIONED WHETHER fewer than 1,000 completed surveys out of nearly 20,000 students give a meaningful result.

“It would be inappropriate to reach any conclusion about the majority of students at Ohio University’s Athens campus based on the limited results of this survey,” she argued. “The response rate was low and was not representative of the student population. Of greatest concern is the under-representation of undergraduate students in the responses.”

She also noted that a General Fee Advisory Committee, which provides recommendations to the president each year on the distribution of general-fee money, and which includes both graduate and undergraduate students, has “consistently over the years” ranked intercollegiate sports “among the top priorities.”

Vedder responded, “I think the response actually is remarkably large.” He said he’s “fairly confident” that the respondents are a decent reflection demographically of the OU student body, though he acknowledged that grad students are somewhat over-represented.

“And if you think the sample is biased… let’s do a bigger sample,” he said. As for the Advisory Committee, he suggested, its student members are “hand-picked” for the job, and certainly aren’t a representative sample of the student body.

A HANDFUL OF OU faculty members, including Faculty Senate chair Joe McLaughlin, attended the group’s news conference Thursday, and generally expressed support for its findings.

Steve Hays, a professor of classics and world religions, estimated that, based on their comparative fee and tuition levels, Ohio University – while more expensive to attend than Ohio State – allocates $597 less annually than OSU does to each student’s education.

John Gilliom, chair of OU’s political science department, cited an estimate of around $765 for what each OU student pays each year in general fees to subsidize athletics.

While that may not seem outrageous to some, he said, for a financially strapped student to earn that much in a work-study program represents “a lot of work… 765 bucks a year is a lot of money.”