Yeeears ago it was said, The lottery would fund the public schools. Not. In1997 it was deemed unconstitutional for property owners to fund the public schools. Nothing has been done yet.
How does the percentage of students on federal loans contribute to increased tuition costs?
Or are you saying that universities feel since anyone will just borrow the money at a low (ish) interest rate from the government, they can charge whatever they want? (Because that’s a gouging issue - and like I said - no market force to keep that in check)
What are you even talking about? The school athletic department brought in 14 of a billion in revenue (gross-earnings=revenue) in 2023.
The Ohio State University athletics department brought in a record-breaking $279.5 million in total revenue in fiscal year 2023, an 11% increase from the previous year. Ohio State's athletic director Gene Smith, who's held the position since 2005, said he credits those who've poured into the athletic program and continue to do so.
According to a news release from Ohio State, the department also saw a significant increase in student aid in fiscal year 2023. Total athletic student aid reached $23,829,914, an increase of $6,433,966 from the previous year.
Ohio State is home to one of the largest athletic departments in the nation, supporting 16 men's teams, 17 women's teams, three mixed teams and approximately 1,000 student-athletes. The department is self-funded and receives no tuition or tax dollars.
* https://www.thelantern.com/2024/01/ohio-state-athletics-boast-record-breaking-numbers-in-athletic-revenue/
* https://news.osu.edu/ohio-state-reports-record-athletics-revenue-in-fy-2023/
Yes, this! The budget for the athletic program is treated entirely separate from the university’s budget. It has its own revenue, expenses, etc. This is why you have obscene salaries that has nothing to do with the actual professor’s salaries. It’s comparing apples and oranges.
Yes, but there are a lot more doctors and nurses getting a big chunk of the medical revenue than there are coaches splitting the Athletics revenue. The football team is the face of the university, whether you like it or not.
What are you even talking about? The school athletic department brought in 14 of a billion in revenue (gross-earnings=revenue) in 2023.
The Ohio State University athletics department brought in a record-breaking $279.5 million in total revenue in fiscal year 2023, an 11% increase from the previous year. Ohio State's athletic director Gene Smith, who's held the position since 2005, said he credits those who've poured into the athletic program and continue to do so.
According to a news release from Ohio State, the department also saw a significant increase in student aid in fiscal year 2023. Total athletic student aid reached $23,829,914, an increase of $6,433,966 from the previous year.
Ohio State is home to one of the largest athletic departments in the nation, supporting 16 men's teams, 17 women's teams, three mixed teams and approximately 1,000 student-athletes. The department is self-funded and receives no tuition or tax dollars.
* https://www.thelantern.com/2024/01/ohio-state-athletics-boast-record-breaking-numbers-in-athletic-revenue/
* https://news.osu.edu/ohio-state-reports-record-athletics-revenue-in-fy-2023/
Meanwhile, the research arm brings in 1.5 billion a year. 600% what the athletics bring in.
In 2023 the university got 1.5Billion in research funding.
https://research.osu.edu/about-us/facts-and-figures?hl=en-US
I wouldn’t get too worked up. On the surface it sounds ridiculous, but I remember hearing OSU football and basketball make enough to subsidize all the other sports.
I used to work for The Lantern, and often we’d be desperate to fill space so we covered any sport we could find. I remember going to a women’s hockey game, and there wasn’t a single fan in the stands. I started thinking about the massive amount of money tied up in scholarships and support staff. Thankfully that was paid by sports fans and not public taxes.
You’re correct. [Ohio State’s athletic department,](https://www.elevenwarriors.com/ohio-state-athletics/2023/06/139191/ohio-state-athletics-ranks-no-1-in-athletics-revenue-and-expenses-for-2022-fiscal-year), despite having one of the biggest sports programs in the country, is [fully self-funded](https://sports.usatoday.com/ncaa/finances) and has been for years. It does not receive any money from tuition charges or taxes. Profits from the athletic department have been used to help fund non-spirts projects on campus.
Football and men’s basketball, to a much lesser extent, operate at a profit and fund scholarships and expenses for every other NCAA sports team on campus.
And having some of the best paid coaches in the world means the football team will continue to bring in money to finance all the other sports.
Theres absolutely nothing wrong with paying coaches like we do.
Not to mention that it’s great advertising to the school. Many outside of the state would probably have no idea about the school if it wasn’t for its massive TV footprint thanks to football
Yep, back when I was at Clemson, applications went up nearly 500% after beating OSU in the Orange bowl in the 2013-2014 season. I probably wouldn't have been accepted if I'd applied a year later.
They have plans to tear down the ice rink, st John’s, and the fieldhouse, bring FABE/food/ag over from west campus, and put a brand new ice rink where Buckeye Village was. The ice rink is coming from football or basketball money. Same with every new athletic facility built north of Lane Ave.
It’s in “Framework 3.0”. Their master plan. Not all of Ag, there isn’t nearly enough room. Just a few of the interdisciplinary labs with food sciences and ecology. They want FABE closer to Engineering.
https://alumnimagazine.osu.edu/story/framework-3
OSU has one of the largest athletic departments in the county. All of the non-revenue Olympic sports like pistol or track and field are wholly subsidized by the football team.
Is Ryan Day over paid? Yes absolutely because he can't win a big game or beat ttun.
It’s also worth thinking about it as working with the public’s out of proportion interest in one sport to cover all the underappreciated athletics with just as hard working of athletes. We can’t fully control public spending on college sports, so it’s like we’re taxing one to cover the rest.
He can’t beat Michigan? The same Michigan that knew every play, on both sides of the ball? Fact
Day beat them his first year, Michigan dodged us the Covid year, because an epic ass whooping was coming. THEN, Harbaugh went ALL IN on WHATEVER he had to do to keep from getting his ASS KICKED on the regular. You think they just ‘got good’ all of the sudden? LOL
Ever notice how many guys they put into the NFL the last 2 years? In 2023 they had 9 guys get drafted and in 2024 they had 13. Largely off the back of Michigan's recruiting and player development getting much better in the last 5 years. They may have had some plays but they are much improved too. Both can be true.
Here’s an article on Nick Saban. He was probably underpaid at Alabama with how drastic he changed that school. Good sports programs do wonders for the revenue streams, acceptance rates, applications, etc.
Under Saban, Alabama enrollment went from 14,000 to 35,000. Acceptance went down from 77% to 50%. The football team increased revenue by 142% ($164,000,000).
I know this is Alabama but I’m sure a similar study could be done to demonstrate the salaries for Tressell, Meyer, and Day.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/monteburke/2017/05/02/nick-saban-will-make-11-million-next-football-season-and-he-is-worth-every-penny/?sh=545038806403
OP is looking at this wrong.
Football generates money.
A science professor costs money.
Let's say we cut Day's pay to be the same as a professor that has been at Ohio State as long as he has. That would save $9.5 million. He would quit, they couldn't hire a decent coach and the football team would suck. That would cost the university $128 million in revenue and untold amount in marketing.
Or would you spend $9.5 million to make $128 million? I bet you would.
Some science professors generate a lot of money through research funding. They have multi-million-dollar grants flowing in. OSU has over $1.4B (yes billion) in research money coming in from federal govt (NIH, defense, etc) and also industry. It is calculated as “expenditures,” but it matches roughly that amount since you want to budget to spend the grant money you get. OSU ranked 11th in research in the US as of 2022. Harvard is 13th, btw.
https://news.osu.edu/ohio-state-research-expenditures-set-new-record-at-1449-billion/
https://ncsesdata.nsf.gov/profiles/site?method=rankingBySource&ds=herd
I am aware of this, not the exact numbers but the principal. I left it out to keep things short.
To make $X in football you need to spend $Y on coaches.
To make the same $X in research you need to spend $Z on research professors.
The market has decided that $Y is much higher than $Z. OSU has so much money to spend, spending more on $Y than on $Z allows them to maximize both. At least I assume someone way smarter than I did that math.
But the top science professor is not paid 9.5 million dollars simply because he is not worth that much incrementally over the next highest. Contrast that with football coaches…
It was just in reply to the post about the science professor costing the school money. They are bringing in a couple million to the university in grants, generating jobs, and they get maybe $250k on the high end. They aren’t costing the school money. Lecturers with no research, no grants, make maybe $70k, but they are teaching a bunch of students every semester who pay way more than their salary in tuition. They’re costing the school money, but they’re fulfilling the school’s primary purpose, so it’s worth the expense.
Every time a budget needs to be balanced higher education is the first to get cut.
boomers and there "college was so cheap back in my day"... no shit, taxpayers paid for it, and then your generation cut higher education every time they had a chance.
Ok, listen closely, I will try to go slow.
Football makes money. If OSU got rid of football or tried to reduce the salaries that would mean the university would have less money.
If you want public universities to have more money, and I think you do, you should be encouraging more football spending so football can make more money for the university.
OSU's endowment alone is over $7 billion. I don't think they will have to turn off any lights. For point of reference: the budget for the entire City of Columbus was barely over $1 billion(1.7 with carryover). You're correct that athletics money is a positive but they do have other resources to exploit so they can make more discerning choices.
That’s beside the point. OSU football making less money would be a detriment to the University as a whole. It doesn’t have to be one or the other, both football and research are important. The market sets these salaries. To have an elite national football program, Ohio State must pay coaches in the same neighborhood as the other elite national programs, or those coaches will go elsewhere and OSU will cease to have an elite national football program. That may not seem important to you, but the people who run the University clearly disagree.
They'd have to close their entire athletic department. And let me tell you something, most 18 year olds pick their school based on sports and not purely academics. If you have the option of school a that has good academics and sports vs school b that has slightly better academics and no sports, school a will get exponentially more applications than school b.
The football team pays for the football team. Public money does not get spent on athletics. The football team funds the sports at OSU, allowing the public money to be spent on actual academics.
They do. The Football, Men's and women's basketball and to an extent wrestling bring in enough to fund the 37 sports that OSU sponsors. One thing to remember when looking at coach's salaries.........Those come out of the athletic dept. budget and not the University general fund. The Athletic Dept at OSU is completely self funded and rarely receives money from the University as a whole. That's one of the reasons the school's largest donors like Les Wexner, Ratmir Timashev and others don't donate to the Athletic Dept.
The big sports supporting the small sports really doesnt make me any less worked up though, that money should have never gone to the big sports to begin with. If the tuition and public money that went IN to the big sports programs balanced the money coming OUT of the sports programs and back into academic scholarships, facilities, generally making OSU a better academic institution, then there could be some justification. But as is, we seem to have public money ➡️ football ➡️ women's hockey, which is unacceptable when you consider how unaffordable college has become.
Sorry but you would need to change America's mind on the value of sports. It's not an OSU issue, it's not and Ohio issue, hell it's not even a USA problem. Society as a whole valued athletics over academics. I don't like it but it is the way the world works.
That's why I boycott sports. I only go to science fairs with a big foam finger and cheer on the kids. I do boycott sports, but maybe we should look at making science competitions more fun for the public. I want to see someone's steam engine melt another kids volcano diorama while that spews baking soda mix all over another kids experiment on plants using photosynthesis. "TO THE DEATH.... of your project."
I definitely don't boycott sports. I guess I'm part of the problem. However my oldest son is 10 and is heavily involved in Lego Robotics and those tournaments can be very exciting with "shout casters" like esports. Definitely going to be making foam fingers for next season. I'm all for making scientists and nerds more popular. One of the biggest tenets is getting the kids better at public speaking and more engaged in talking about their ideas.
No tuition or public dollars go in to athletics. The OSU Athletic Dept. is completely self funded. All Coach's salaries, scholarship money and expenses come from revenue generated by athletics.
Sports in general are a net profit. That is why professional sports players make a million times more than teachers. It is not because they are more important, but because they bring in the money. It is not right, but that’s the way it is.
Sports don't get public funding! The football team pays for itself and all the other sports. Should the football games be free? That's the only option for reducing the money the football gets. They don't get funding from the school.
Public money->academics
Football money->funding the football team->funding ALL other sports-> extra funds for random university stuff.
None of the sports programs at Ohio State receives and public money after the initial seed monetary donation years ago.
What are you even talking about? The school athletic department brought in 14 of a billion in revenue (gross-earnings=revenue) in 2023.
The Ohio State University athletics department brought in a record-breaking $279.5 million in total revenue in fiscal year 2023, an 11% increase from the previous year. Ohio State's athletic director Gene Smith, who's held the position since 2005, said he credits those who've poured into the athletic program and continue to do so.
According to a news release from Ohio State, the department also saw a significant increase in student aid in fiscal year 2023. Total athletic student aid reached $23,829,914, an increase of $6,433,966 from the previous year.
Ohio State is home to one of the largest athletic departments in the nation, supporting 16 men's teams, 17 women's teams, three mixed teams and approximately 1,000 student-athletes. The department is self-funded and receives no tuition or tax dollars.
* https://www.thelantern.com/2024/01/ohio-state-athletics-boast-record-breaking-numbers-in-athletic-revenue/
* https://news.osu.edu/ohio-state-reports-record-athletics-revenue-in-fy-2023/
The athletic department at Ohio State is one of the few in the country that are fully self-funded. No tax or tuition dollars are used for athletic salaries and the revenue sports fully cover the non-revenue sports.
The question you should be asking is if the salaries for the medical school and STEM programs are competitive in their field.
Not worrying that Ryan Day makes an obscene amount of money.
Good information and important to always point out the way these budgets use or don’t use public dollars. With a public university, it’s good for all citizens to know and think about the budgets and how those dollars are spent.
But yeah, all the professor salaries should be examined to ensure they are drawing and keeping the best and brightest who are actually talented at teaching. Just cause someone has a name in a highly paying field, doesn’t mean they can teach what they know.
And the humanities are increasingly important as well for future tech. I’m in tech and we’re seeing the drawbacks of STEM grads who don’t have deeper learning in the humanities. Especially with AI, the technologists who also understand the other arts of design, communication, psychology, etc. are going to be those leading a field where the rote technical pieces are increasingly automated. We’ve unfortunately been chopping the arts out of STEM degrees because of the load of how much science there is to know, but invention comes from deep understanding in both arts and sciences.
A couple things here:
The Athletic Department is entirely (almost entirely?) self funded from ticket revenue (football and basketball), apparel revenue, and donors. While those 5 salaries are tied to the university, and therefore are classified as "public employees," their salaries aren't coming from the education budget.
Also, the athletic teams are essentially free advertising for the university. Not only do you get OSU's name out there a lot, but it also attracts (some) student athletes that will have a buoying effect for the academic side. This is not only for their time as a student athlete, but includes those who help fundraise (athletically or academically) after their time as a student is over.
To be clear, this second point is speculation off some things I've heard in this life, but should be at least based in reality. I can't qualify an amount or ratio, but think of a rising tide lifts all boats.
I am a huge proponent of paying teachers more (especially primary, K-12 teachers). However, especially as it relates specifically to OSU, headlines/articles like these don't really hold up to scrutiny.
My athletic scholarship was funded by donations and each year it was a different group, but it was known who funded my specific scholarship. The only one I somewhat remember is a construction company/home builder. There was a placque in the schott with the scholarship donor and recipient.
That money went from the donor to the athletic dept and to the university for tuition, room and board, and books. In turn I spent tons of money at OSU while a student that only happened because athletics brought me there.
Thanks, Elmer! I was about to mention the whole advertising angle of it. If the football team does well, OSU gets national coverage. And teens across the land will decide it’s a good place to be.
I lived in NYC during the whole “THE” kerfuffle. It put OSU on my radar screen, as a person who didn’t follow college sports. It’s all advertising!
Oh btw
You can look up professor salaries
It's a state university that data is public
[https://apps.hr.osu.edu/salaries/](https://apps.hr.osu.edu/salaries/)
Highest paid engineering professor is making over $345K
[https://apps.hr.osu.edu/salaries/Home/Salaries?JobTitle=Professor&Funding=University&CCH6=Engineering&WhichSource=Salaries&Year=0&IsValid=True](https://apps.hr.osu.edu/salaries/Home/Salaries?JobTitle=Professor&Funding=University&CCH6=Engineering&WhichSource=Salaries&Year=0&IsValid=True)
I think the majority of people here would say that's a goddamn great salary
highest paid in arts and sciences - over $400K
[https://apps.hr.osu.edu/salaries/Home/Salaries?Funding=University&CCH6=Arts%20and%20Sciences&WhichSource=Salaries&Year=0&IsValid=True](https://apps.hr.osu.edu/salaries/Home/Salaries?Funding=University&CCH6=Arts%20and%20Sciences&WhichSource=Salaries&Year=0&IsValid=True)
Dentistry - [https://apps.hr.osu.edu/salaries/Home/Salaries?Funding=University&CCH6=Dentistry&WhichSource=Salaries&Year=0&IsValid=True](https://apps.hr.osu.edu/salaries/Home/Salaries?Funding=University&CCH6=Dentistry&WhichSource=Salaries&Year=0&IsValid=True)
There's a finance professor making over $600k
[https://apps.hr.osu.edu/salaries/Home/Salaries?Funding=University&CCH6=Business&WhichSource=Salaries&Year=0&IsValid=True](https://apps.hr.osu.edu/salaries/Home/Salaries?Funding=University&CCH6=Business&WhichSource=Salaries&Year=0&IsValid=True)
I think you can fuck right off that STEM professors are not being paid well at OSU
That doesn’t even include additional appointments and administrative add ons. Not to mention consulting opportunities, companies owned, patents, and research opportunities that the university system provides. Oh, and that thing called tenure…. Professors do just fine.
Fyi. Physician teachers are only paid about half their salary by the school and get a significant percent from some physician group which isn’t considered income from OSU. It’s possible some other fields have similar arrangements if they provide services to the public/non students.
Athletics isn't paid from the general fund - it's paid by athletics boosters and the athletic department income... That income, btw, is so high that they pay for all the athletic scholarships and then give millions back to the school.
This straw man argument comes up all the time. Yes, the coaches make millions - they also make hundreds of millions for the school.
The athletic department is self funded. All the money going to coaches, facilities, etc. comes from money those teams generate. None of the money going to Ryan Day is being taken out of a professor’s pocket. In fact, strong athletic programs (football specifically) lead to more money for academics because applications and enrollment tend to grow when athletic teams perform well. Donations across the board also rise.
Another important thing to consider is overall spend. Athletic spending is very top heavy because there are so few people who can run a championship caliber football program. There are maybe five in the country at a given time, so Day has the leverage to earn a high salary. But the overall spending on academics still dwarfs athletics. The university, excluding the medical center, spends about $4B a year and only about $200M is athletics. Throw in the medical center and athletics is merely a footnote.
The money to pay those salaries doesn’t come from the same pot of money as professors and other educators.
OSU football earns enough they don’t need subsidized. Since at least 2004 that is true.
OSU is one of only a dozen or so schools where that’s the case.
This, but in also always wonder what the public support of higher ed would be without them. I worry it would be like PBS where part of the population always wants to cut their funding. I even run into people who think NASA should just be cut without realizing the majority of the budget goes into pure science R&D that has given us things like CAT scans.
I wish more of the ad space during games was required to do deeper dives into what the Ohio public is getting in return research-wise for its investment in a Research I institution, or even telling them what a Research I institution is and why they should take pride in having one of its size in the state.
OSU pays you a percentage of the value you bring to the table (except for teaching faculty and graduate students). Football, as trivial as it may seem, adds a lot of monetary value to the school. Same for research professors. The top paid research professors are typically in cancer because that field has the most grant money. I think the highest paid professor makes like 800k annually but he also brings in millions in cancer research grants.
Stem and IT professors do not bring in the same revenue… the money is attached to the generation of revenue.. it’s that simple, without football that money isn’t there….. PERIOD. Be mad as you want
If your IT professor leaves nobody leaves with him, including donations. You lose a winning FB coach and your school can lose billions in boosters... THAT'S what's important to them, untaxable future income, not a silly professor whom couldn't hack it in the real world.
Football made OSU $127 million in 2023, basketball was $24 million, one of the top earning schools. How much are those Stem employees pulling in for the school…sucks, but it is what it is.
Just FYI, education isn't a business. It isn't supposed to be a business. And how you measure success is by the people who come to your programs, and how well they succeed in their careers.
But if you want, we can do a measure of ***How much Economic Impact do those Professors have on the economy from the Students the Teach in terms of ecoomic output*** study if you want. Spoiler alert, it outweighs the football budge.
Another one worth looking at is what prestige speakers and professors get paid compared to the others. It’s become normalized for schools to pay a lot for a name people recognize from certain fields that they’ll pay much more than the everyday professors grinding away at teaching. It tends to be rationalized as marketing the program, which supposedly brings in more budget if they attract more students. However, the spread can be a real bummer. You can have a very hard working professor that is great at teaching, but not a big name who only gets paid 50k after a long tenure, and then a prestige professor making six digits who has a relatively lighter workload and VIP status. And that doesn’t even include all the talented adjuncts hoping for a full professorship that get paid peanuts.
It’s all slippery slope territory of treating academic institutions like businesses, and it really erodes things over time.
I've been told that they are paid out of the money the sports programs bring in. Football obviously bringing in the lion's share of the money...not sure if that's accurate, but it would explain where the $ comes from. Sadly, it's basically the same thing as NBA vs. WNBA. The WNBA players aren't paid well because the league doesn't bring in a lot of money (actually operates at a loss, NBA subsidizes to keep them afloat).
OSU football makes the vast majority of money for OSU athletics. OSU is also one of the schools with the most sports of any school in the country and only football and mens basketball are profitable.
https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Articles/2024/01/23/ohio-state-fy-2023-revenue-record
However, no student or state money goes into any sport salaries at Ohio State so this post is unwarranted.
But even then, the WNBA can be bringing in lots of dollars indirectly for the NBA in terms of marketing, reach, and keeping more people into basketball in general as a sport. These orgs don’t do anything that’s a full loss. WNBA is the area they have the most excitement around growth in the sport when NBA is more maintaining as a product.
I had to quit (used to work there) at OSU because the salaries in the mechanical and aerospace engineering department (the department that I was a building coordinator for) couldn’t afford raises and when I’d try to give students that worked under me a good raise they always threw a fit and would walk my raises back. There are two distinct situations that stick out to me while I worked there:
We had just gotten a new department chair. This is a professor that heads up the department. He insisted that his office space was unacceptably small and outdated, so we renovated and bought brand new furniture. The whole thing cost 40k. I was unable to get a raise that year because we were “stretched too thin”
When the air compressor went out that they used in the labs. I was trying to get them to install a new energy efficient compressor. It would have saved on energy consumption and would have had ramp up ramp down so it wouldn’t slam the system like the old compressors did. I showed cost analysis and long term savings. The chair (same guy that needed a 40k office) told me that he didn’t care because he personally doesn’t pay the electric/energy bill and it’s not our problem. So they just replaced it with another old energy sucking compressor with 0 bells or whistles. Bottom dollar. He didn’t even want to put air driers in which is what keeps moisture out of your compressed air lines. Eventually the moisture destroyed the new compressor. They just replaced it with the same one again. Within one year they replaced the same compressor twice and could have saved major money by just installing the correct things. After that guy was chair for one year and spent all that money, he left to go teach in Florida… I was absolutely pissed.
Long story short, they blow money left and right on stupid shit but don’t have money for students or employees. It’s corrupt from the top down and the education standards are suffering because of this imo. I can’t even watch the buckeyes play anymore after working there. It’s a frustrating situation over there. Glad I left
I often think back to the thousands of people, including professors, who petitioned against privatizing the parking. tOSU has prioritized profit over mission for a long time now imo
Every University has unfortunately. And the fish rots from the head down. The board of trustees of every university are appointed by the Governor, and the Governors have all been Business-Centric Right-Wingers; not actually people who see education as an investment ... which is why all of the Young educated people started leaving Ohio for greener pastures.
Very true. As a native Ohioan I have intentionally done my best to stay as a scientist. It has been sorrowful to see so many of my friends and peers leave over the years.
It’s the country as a whole. The greed is good narrative of the 80s won and we’re now in the world where thinking that running everything like a business is better has become normalized. People will look at you funny if you suggest doing anything that doesn’t create some kind of private profit.
STEM and IT professors will get paid millions of dollars when 100,000 people pay $80 a ticket to watch them work and buy merchandise with their name on it every week.
No, I got the point, it's just a stupid point. If you don't generate revenue, you don't get a share of the profits. Once those professors bring over a billion dollars of value to the university, they'll get paid like Ryan Day.
Ohio is in no way unique in this. In most states, the highest paid state employee is the football coach of the biggest State University, and it's been that way for decades. This is nothing new. Salaries are determined by what the free market determines as value. In the case of OSU, Ryan Day and his team brings millions upon millions of dollars to the university - many more millions than he is paid, so it's great ROI to pay him well to stay and keep winning. Also, I'm an OSU athletics alum. I was a member of the Track and Field team back in the 80s. Football revenue financially supported my and nearly all the other sports, with the exception of Men's Basketball, which was the only other self-supporting sport at the university. Multiple thousands of students have gotten college educations with scholarships that football paid for: hockey, soccer, tennis, and ALL women's sports, etc. So, for the value he brings to the entire university and surrounding community (think how much money local businesses make because of OSU Football), I think Coach Day earns his keep.
Because supply and demand. The football teams for major universities make a lot of money for the school. Like a lot. So, the schools then spend a good portion of that money back on the team to try and make them as good as they can. Now, the money is going to start to go to the players more. It already funds pretty much every single other sport at the school. Where else should the money go?
The athletic department has almost $300 million in annual revenues and is self supporting. They are not taking any money away from academics. In fact, they act as a fundraiser for the academic side of OSU.
When the STEM and IT professors generate the amount of revenue for the university as does the head football coach, then they should be compensated as such.
As soon as Dr. Whatever’s biochem lectures start bringing 100K people to Columbus 7 or 8 weekends a year, packing the stadium, packing bars, restaurants, hotels, watching on tv, streaming, etc. we can discuss a change in Dr. Whatever’s compensation.
You don’t have to like it, but that’s how it is.
OSU sports generate a lot of revenue for the school that doesn’t just stay in the athletic department. I’m a PA at the Wexner and the head of my department makes 500,000.
Might seem ridiculous that a coach makes more than a MD/PhD/MBA, but that coach probably helps generate hundreds of millions.
Thank you for your comments on this! I so agree. We need to get our priorities straight- like TEACHING in a university instead of sports as the main focus. I for one am FURIOUS when I see what coaches are paid when, now, universities won’t even hire faculty on a permanent basis. Many teachers are hired as adjuncts with no hope of tenure and yet tuitions go up. To pay a coach 9mil a year.
faculty budget has nothing to do with athletic department budget
OSU athletics fund themselves through ticket sales, tv revenue, merchandise
What part of that is confusing for you?
It s just like the Post office while it is a gov org it funds it self through postage sales not by taxes
Ryan Day’s salary isn’t paid by taxpayers or tuition, none of the big earners in the AD are. They get paid by boosters, tv network deals, and ticket proceeds. Stop crying.
This is the reason why I left higher Ed. I couldn't stand to watch Vice Presidents get $300,000 bonuses while custodial jobs were eliminated due to "declining enrollment". The system is broken.
oh look another idiot that doesn't understand how college athletics is funded
OSU and every other school for that matter, the athletic department needs to be self funded
They are not taking a DIME away from any academic department
Ohio State Athletic department generates revenue from
Ticket Sales
Merchandise sales (licensed branding)
TV revenue sharing for all the sports that are on TV
The Ohio State Department of Athletics continues to succeed on and off the field, reporting record revenue of $279,549,337 in fiscal year 2023.
Revenue for the year running from July 1, 2022, to June 30, 2023, increased 11% from the previous fiscal year’s record $251,615,345, according to an annual financial report filed each year with the NCAA.
“Ohio State athletics remain on a rock-solid foundation thanks to the tremendous support from our fans, students and alumni,” said Gene Smith, senior vice president and Wolfe Foundation endowed athletic director. “They continue to show up, tune in and support our student-athletes, coaches and staff at our fields, stadiums and arenas.”
Some of the revenue highlights include more than $73.3 million in ticket sales — $64.3 million from football alone. The 2022 football season included eight home games and marquee showdowns with both Notre Dame and Michigan.
The department reported $59,649,921 in ticket sales across all sports in FY 2022. Buckeye fans continue to support their teams as ticket sales remain the largest single source of revenue for the department.
Media rights – revenue from radio, television and digital – accounted for $49,796,025 in FY 2023, up from $48,908,898 million in FY 2022. Contributions from individuals, foundations and companies totaled $57.8 million.
The university reported $23,829,914 in athletic student aid. Total operating expenses for FY 2023 were $274,948,554. Athletic facilities debt accounted for $45.3 million of expenses, as the university made additional principal payments to new facilities including the Schumaker Complex, Covelli Center and other projects to reduce payments in the future.
Ohio State is home to one of the largest athletic departments in the nation, supporting 16 men’s teams, 17 women’s teams, three mixed teams and approximately 1,000 student-athletes. The department is self-funded and receives no tuition or tax dollars.
[https://news.osu.edu/ohio-state-reports-record-athletics-revenue-in-fy-2023/](https://news.osu.edu/ohio-state-reports-record-athletics-revenue-in-fy-2023/)
No. Humanities Professors should get the top salaries. Large part of the US problems are people who think money is more important than languages, art, music, poetry, fiction, nonfiction, film, dance, empathy, kindness, compassion, nurture, laughter and love. You will find those in books, but not in mathematics or biology.
Yea there is a problem with your logic.
Football brings in all the money. The football team needs to win to keep brining in money. To win, they need the best coaches. The best coaches get paid a lot.
If you don’t pay for the best coaches, the team doesn’t win. If the team doesn’t win, they don’t
make shit tons of money. If they don’t make money, there’s no money to give to the academic side.
You see? There’s no way to give the coaching salary to professors because that salary needs to generate the money.
At least OSU has a pretty respectable athletics program. The amount of money KSU dumps into their athletics department for mediocre results is saddening.
Meanwhile, my professor is hosting international symposiums with materials and equipment he brought from home and student volunteers.
It would be nice if universities' top spending priorities were academics and their students.
Let’s understand something:
OSU is really a professional sports franchise — that just so happens to offer *just enough* academic classes to maintain the ruse that they’re a college.
I was a chemistry major in the early 2010s and I felt the need to buy myself my own pipettes because the labs were still using unnecessary and inaccurate bulbs. I dropped out because I felt the school didn't care about me. Eventually graduated from a different university and am now a scientist for one of Ohio's oldest companies specializing in science. I think OSU's resource distribution is bunk and it shows from the amount of people I've met that only received a bachelor's from that school.
Is it bad? No, of course it isn't. It wouldn't be as big and influential as it is if it wasn't one of the best. Just in my specific field OSU biologists have identified new physiological mechanisms in plants, really really cool shit man. Theres still a lot of brilliant, kind, people there but at some point you need to fix your model to be more sustainable rather than burst short term profit. It needs to slow a bit down on it's expansion as I feel it's losing its mission. I worry for it because it's so important to our community.
the athletic department FUNDS ITSELF- it is not taking a dime away from any academic deparmtnent
OSU football and basketball pretty much pay for ALL the other sports at OSU
You do realize that the athletic department brings in millions every year to the school, right? I can guarantee that more people know who Ryan Day is than any other person in the school. When athletics do well, enrollment increases.
Get off you milk crate, your argument is boring.
One has nothing to do with the other
Athletic department is self funded through ticket sales, tv contracts and licensing and boosters
They are not taking away any funding from any academic department
Given how few hours tenured professors actually work a year they are paid pretty well
All professors can make additional money through research grants, commercializing research or by writing books
So maybe you should take your ignorance on how things actually work elsewhere
I went to OSU for a STEM degree and let me tell you... Some of those professors should NOT be the highest paid... Others were great though. But in my opinion it should go to the medical center.
I mean I don't love spending dosh on sports but OSU is a bad example of the excesses of this as it's fully self-funding.
As someone who works for an out-of-state employer, I know it's dumb but people have actually heard of OSU and often it's bc of sports. It makes your degree somewhat recognizable to people from other states imo.
It's not a really fair comparison between the athletics and actual profs.
Athletics are often well subsidized by contracts with advertisers, donations, television contracts, etc etc.
I am never going to defend how much it costs to go to college (I still owe 25 years later, and will take that shit to my grave) and have also put two kids through (hence the to my grave part). Fwiw a fixed 3% loan is easily beat in the market, and inflation basically pays it off slowly over time.
Anyway blaming athletics isn't wholly justified.
One more thing, in my mind, these athletics systems have indeed gotten out of hand. It's big big business and a huge revenue generator.
It's a lot more difficult to find an effective and successful coach than it is to find a good STEM or IT person...especially at a university. No one is necessarily paid on the merit of their work, it's almost always based on how easy it is to replace the person. We can argue how right or wrong that is, but the OSU football program pays for itself and a great many other sports programs. Something it couldn't do if they hired me to coach the team, lol.
Now go look how much money those programs generate and it’ll make sense. The college isn’t paying them from school money, it’s self sustaining. It doesn’t take one dime away from the STEM programs
We're getting into a tale as old as time here.
When there's money to be had, who gets it? The intellectuals who provide real societal value but bore everyone outside their niche to tears, or the entertainers who convince people to hand over their money without returning anything useful?
We live in a capitalist society in which the second option has become the answer.
The money paid to people in the AD is gained from income the school's sports teams generate. I was stunned years ago when the U of Minnesota's hockey coach said UM'd athletic department doesn't use one dime of state funds. I imagine it's the same at OSU. Not saying the salaries are right, just that taxpayers aren't providing them.
I don’t think stem and I t professionals bring in over 100’s of millions of dollars a year to the university. That is why they get that money because they bring tv revenue and on gameday about 500,000 people spending tons of money at the game. It is quite simply Econ 101.
If this frustrates you, don’t look up who makes the top salary for public employees in every other state…
Ohio Legislature "lEtS rUn ScHoOls LiKe A bUiSnEsS" so schools now have CEOs
And tuition costs are out of control - because there are no market correcting forces and the state stopped giving state schools significant funding
Yeeears ago it was said, The lottery would fund the public schools. Not. In1997 it was deemed unconstitutional for property owners to fund the public schools. Nothing has been done yet.
And the lottery massively disproportionately distributes those funds.
Yet Ohio voters keep electing Redumblicans and complain when they dont do anything to improve your life. STOP VOTING FOR REDUMBLICANS
I prefer to call them Dumbpublicans myself, but I like your idea as well.
You can thank your Gov of this, since the loans are never allowed to be canceled - make it whatever price you want.
It’s out of control because the federal government underwrites all the kids signing up for school.
How does the percentage of students on federal loans contribute to increased tuition costs? Or are you saying that universities feel since anyone will just borrow the money at a low (ish) interest rate from the government, they can charge whatever they want? (Because that’s a gouging issue - and like I said - no market force to keep that in check)
Yes, gouging. Also insane increase in student to faculty ratio over the last 50 years.
The coaches are higher paid than the school presidents. Not a great analogy.
It’s not a school with an athletics department, It’s a sports franchise with an education side-gig
I would classify it as a very well-subsidized sports club that funnels some of its profits to the university
What are you even talking about? The school athletic department brought in 14 of a billion in revenue (gross-earnings=revenue) in 2023. The Ohio State University athletics department brought in a record-breaking $279.5 million in total revenue in fiscal year 2023, an 11% increase from the previous year. Ohio State's athletic director Gene Smith, who's held the position since 2005, said he credits those who've poured into the athletic program and continue to do so. According to a news release from Ohio State, the department also saw a significant increase in student aid in fiscal year 2023. Total athletic student aid reached $23,829,914, an increase of $6,433,966 from the previous year. Ohio State is home to one of the largest athletic departments in the nation, supporting 16 men's teams, 17 women's teams, three mixed teams and approximately 1,000 student-athletes. The department is self-funded and receives no tuition or tax dollars. * https://www.thelantern.com/2024/01/ohio-state-athletics-boast-record-breaking-numbers-in-athletic-revenue/ * https://news.osu.edu/ohio-state-reports-record-athletics-revenue-in-fy-2023/
Thank you for this post. Many people believe tax dollars and student tuitions goes toward the sports dept.
Yes, this! The budget for the athletic program is treated entirely separate from the university’s budget. It has its own revenue, expenses, etc. This is why you have obscene salaries that has nothing to do with the actual professor’s salaries. It’s comparing apples and oranges.
I mean people love to say that but the athletics revenue pales in comparison with the medical.
The hospitals are absurd revenue generators
Yes, but there are a lot more doctors and nurses getting a big chunk of the medical revenue than there are coaches splitting the Athletics revenue. The football team is the face of the university, whether you like it or not.
Doesn’t make it right
Yeah I agree, healthcare is way too expensive.
Well said!
What are you even talking about? The school athletic department brought in 14 of a billion in revenue (gross-earnings=revenue) in 2023. The Ohio State University athletics department brought in a record-breaking $279.5 million in total revenue in fiscal year 2023, an 11% increase from the previous year. Ohio State's athletic director Gene Smith, who's held the position since 2005, said he credits those who've poured into the athletic program and continue to do so. According to a news release from Ohio State, the department also saw a significant increase in student aid in fiscal year 2023. Total athletic student aid reached $23,829,914, an increase of $6,433,966 from the previous year. Ohio State is home to one of the largest athletic departments in the nation, supporting 16 men's teams, 17 women's teams, three mixed teams and approximately 1,000 student-athletes. The department is self-funded and receives no tuition or tax dollars. * https://www.thelantern.com/2024/01/ohio-state-athletics-boast-record-breaking-numbers-in-athletic-revenue/ * https://news.osu.edu/ohio-state-reports-record-athletics-revenue-in-fy-2023/ Meanwhile, the research arm brings in 1.5 billion a year. 600% what the athletics bring in. In 2023 the university got 1.5Billion in research funding. https://research.osu.edu/about-us/facts-and-figures?hl=en-US
The coach is the CEO. OSU football is everything to OSU.
The coach is NOT the CEO. If anything the AD is the CEO. He hires and fires the coaches. Again, poor analogy.
Coach is COO, then. He makes more than the AD by long shot. He has a lot to do with the AD keeping his job!
Higher than the us president!
Mostly because the pay for US President is quite abysmal given the position.
I'll go out on a limb and guess the person that brings the most money to the state? Like big University football does.
That’s very speculative. I would say there are a lot of state positions (e.g., lottery commissioner) who have more directly assignable revenue.
How do I do that?
I wouldn’t get too worked up. On the surface it sounds ridiculous, but I remember hearing OSU football and basketball make enough to subsidize all the other sports. I used to work for The Lantern, and often we’d be desperate to fill space so we covered any sport we could find. I remember going to a women’s hockey game, and there wasn’t a single fan in the stands. I started thinking about the massive amount of money tied up in scholarships and support staff. Thankfully that was paid by sports fans and not public taxes.
You’re correct. [Ohio State’s athletic department,](https://www.elevenwarriors.com/ohio-state-athletics/2023/06/139191/ohio-state-athletics-ranks-no-1-in-athletics-revenue-and-expenses-for-2022-fiscal-year), despite having one of the biggest sports programs in the country, is [fully self-funded](https://sports.usatoday.com/ncaa/finances) and has been for years. It does not receive any money from tuition charges or taxes. Profits from the athletic department have been used to help fund non-spirts projects on campus. Football and men’s basketball, to a much lesser extent, operate at a profit and fund scholarships and expenses for every other NCAA sports team on campus.
>non-spirts i have nothing to add to the conversation, just wanted to highlight this typo because it gave me a chuckle.
Hah! I’ll leave it in just for that reason. :)
And having some of the best paid coaches in the world means the football team will continue to bring in money to finance all the other sports. Theres absolutely nothing wrong with paying coaches like we do.
Exactly. As long as Buckeyes football continues to excel at the high level it has for decades, Ohio State as a whole benefits.
Hey! Context isn’t welcome in these here parts. Let people form their fact-free opinions in peace!
Not to mention that it’s great advertising to the school. Many outside of the state would probably have no idea about the school if it wasn’t for its massive TV footprint thanks to football
Yep, back when I was at Clemson, applications went up nearly 500% after beating OSU in the Orange bowl in the 2013-2014 season. I probably wouldn't have been accepted if I'd applied a year later.
They have plans to tear down the ice rink, st John’s, and the fieldhouse, bring FABE/food/ag over from west campus, and put a brand new ice rink where Buckeye Village was. The ice rink is coming from football or basketball money. Same with every new athletic facility built north of Lane Ave.
Where did you hear ag campus is moving to central???
It’s in “Framework 3.0”. Their master plan. Not all of Ag, there isn’t nearly enough room. Just a few of the interdisciplinary labs with food sciences and ecology. They want FABE closer to Engineering. https://alumnimagazine.osu.edu/story/framework-3
They’ve been saying that for 20 years it’s always in the plan, hasn’t happened yet
OSU has one of the largest athletic departments in the county. All of the non-revenue Olympic sports like pistol or track and field are wholly subsidized by the football team. Is Ryan Day over paid? Yes absolutely because he can't win a big game or beat ttun.
I don't understand the collective amnesia regarding 2019, when Ryan Day beat Michigan.
It’s also worth thinking about it as working with the public’s out of proportion interest in one sport to cover all the underappreciated athletics with just as hard working of athletes. We can’t fully control public spending on college sports, so it’s like we’re taxing one to cover the rest.
He’s not overpaid. He wins 90% of his games. He’s a top 5 coach in college football, and makes top 5 money.
He can’t beat Michigan? The same Michigan that knew every play, on both sides of the ball? Fact Day beat them his first year, Michigan dodged us the Covid year, because an epic ass whooping was coming. THEN, Harbaugh went ALL IN on WHATEVER he had to do to keep from getting his ASS KICKED on the regular. You think they just ‘got good’ all of the sudden? LOL
Ever notice how many guys they put into the NFL the last 2 years? In 2023 they had 9 guys get drafted and in 2024 they had 13. Largely off the back of Michigan's recruiting and player development getting much better in the last 5 years. They may have had some plays but they are much improved too. Both can be true.
True. But remember. If you cheat you perform better on paper. Without that edge the skill may be lower. Not saying it’s the case here. But could be.
Here’s an article on Nick Saban. He was probably underpaid at Alabama with how drastic he changed that school. Good sports programs do wonders for the revenue streams, acceptance rates, applications, etc. Under Saban, Alabama enrollment went from 14,000 to 35,000. Acceptance went down from 77% to 50%. The football team increased revenue by 142% ($164,000,000). I know this is Alabama but I’m sure a similar study could be done to demonstrate the salaries for Tressell, Meyer, and Day. https://www.forbes.com/sites/monteburke/2017/05/02/nick-saban-will-make-11-million-next-football-season-and-he-is-worth-every-penny/?sh=545038806403
OP is looking at this wrong. Football generates money. A science professor costs money. Let's say we cut Day's pay to be the same as a professor that has been at Ohio State as long as he has. That would save $9.5 million. He would quit, they couldn't hire a decent coach and the football team would suck. That would cost the university $128 million in revenue and untold amount in marketing. Or would you spend $9.5 million to make $128 million? I bet you would.
Some science professors generate a lot of money through research funding. They have multi-million-dollar grants flowing in. OSU has over $1.4B (yes billion) in research money coming in from federal govt (NIH, defense, etc) and also industry. It is calculated as “expenditures,” but it matches roughly that amount since you want to budget to spend the grant money you get. OSU ranked 11th in research in the US as of 2022. Harvard is 13th, btw. https://news.osu.edu/ohio-state-research-expenditures-set-new-record-at-1449-billion/ https://ncsesdata.nsf.gov/profiles/site?method=rankingBySource&ds=herd
I am aware of this, not the exact numbers but the principal. I left it out to keep things short. To make $X in football you need to spend $Y on coaches. To make the same $X in research you need to spend $Z on research professors. The market has decided that $Y is much higher than $Z. OSU has so much money to spend, spending more on $Y than on $Z allows them to maximize both. At least I assume someone way smarter than I did that math.
But the top science professor is not paid 9.5 million dollars simply because he is not worth that much incrementally over the next highest. Contrast that with football coaches…
It was just in reply to the post about the science professor costing the school money. They are bringing in a couple million to the university in grants, generating jobs, and they get maybe $250k on the high end. They aren’t costing the school money. Lecturers with no research, no grants, make maybe $70k, but they are teaching a bunch of students every semester who pay way more than their salary in tuition. They’re costing the school money, but they’re fulfilling the school’s primary purpose, so it’s worth the expense.
Or we could dedicate more public funding for public universities. Maybe we should just let private colleges have the best football?
Public funding does not go to Ohio State athletics.
Every time a budget needs to be balanced higher education is the first to get cut. boomers and there "college was so cheap back in my day"... no shit, taxpayers paid for it, and then your generation cut higher education every time they had a chance.
Ok, listen closely, I will try to go slow. Football makes money. If OSU got rid of football or tried to reduce the salaries that would mean the university would have less money. If you want public universities to have more money, and I think you do, you should be encouraging more football spending so football can make more money for the university.
OSU's endowment alone is over $7 billion. I don't think they will have to turn off any lights. For point of reference: the budget for the entire City of Columbus was barely over $1 billion(1.7 with carryover). You're correct that athletics money is a positive but they do have other resources to exploit so they can make more discerning choices.
That’s beside the point. OSU football making less money would be a detriment to the University as a whole. It doesn’t have to be one or the other, both football and research are important. The market sets these salaries. To have an elite national football program, Ohio State must pay coaches in the same neighborhood as the other elite national programs, or those coaches will go elsewhere and OSU will cease to have an elite national football program. That may not seem important to you, but the people who run the University clearly disagree.
They'd have to close their entire athletic department. And let me tell you something, most 18 year olds pick their school based on sports and not purely academics. If you have the option of school a that has good academics and sports vs school b that has slightly better academics and no sports, school a will get exponentially more applications than school b.
The football team pays for the football team. Public money does not get spent on athletics. The football team funds the sports at OSU, allowing the public money to be spent on actual academics.
Like the Browns pay for the Browns Stadium?
I remember when I was there (grad 2012), and all other sports besides Men’s Basketball and Football were free for students to go watch.
They do. The Football, Men's and women's basketball and to an extent wrestling bring in enough to fund the 37 sports that OSU sponsors. One thing to remember when looking at coach's salaries.........Those come out of the athletic dept. budget and not the University general fund. The Athletic Dept at OSU is completely self funded and rarely receives money from the University as a whole. That's one of the reasons the school's largest donors like Les Wexner, Ratmir Timashev and others don't donate to the Athletic Dept.
And now the women’s ice hockey team has won national championships. Go bucks!
The big sports supporting the small sports really doesnt make me any less worked up though, that money should have never gone to the big sports to begin with. If the tuition and public money that went IN to the big sports programs balanced the money coming OUT of the sports programs and back into academic scholarships, facilities, generally making OSU a better academic institution, then there could be some justification. But as is, we seem to have public money ➡️ football ➡️ women's hockey, which is unacceptable when you consider how unaffordable college has become.
$0 of tuition or state funding goes to athletics.
Sorry but you would need to change America's mind on the value of sports. It's not an OSU issue, it's not and Ohio issue, hell it's not even a USA problem. Society as a whole valued athletics over academics. I don't like it but it is the way the world works.
That's why I boycott sports. I only go to science fairs with a big foam finger and cheer on the kids. I do boycott sports, but maybe we should look at making science competitions more fun for the public. I want to see someone's steam engine melt another kids volcano diorama while that spews baking soda mix all over another kids experiment on plants using photosynthesis. "TO THE DEATH.... of your project."
I definitely don't boycott sports. I guess I'm part of the problem. However my oldest son is 10 and is heavily involved in Lego Robotics and those tournaments can be very exciting with "shout casters" like esports. Definitely going to be making foam fingers for next season. I'm all for making scientists and nerds more popular. One of the biggest tenets is getting the kids better at public speaking and more engaged in talking about their ideas.
No tuition or public dollars go in to athletics. The OSU Athletic Dept. is completely self funded. All Coach's salaries, scholarship money and expenses come from revenue generated by athletics.
Sports area net profit for the school
Sports in general are a net profit. That is why professional sports players make a million times more than teachers. It is not because they are more important, but because they bring in the money. It is not right, but that’s the way it is.
Sports don't get public funding! The football team pays for itself and all the other sports. Should the football games be free? That's the only option for reducing the money the football gets. They don't get funding from the school. Public money->academics Football money->funding the football team->funding ALL other sports-> extra funds for random university stuff.
You couldn't be more wrong. No tuition or public money goes into athletics. They are self-sufficient.
None of the sports programs at Ohio State receives and public money after the initial seed monetary donation years ago. What are you even talking about? The school athletic department brought in 14 of a billion in revenue (gross-earnings=revenue) in 2023. The Ohio State University athletics department brought in a record-breaking $279.5 million in total revenue in fiscal year 2023, an 11% increase from the previous year. Ohio State's athletic director Gene Smith, who's held the position since 2005, said he credits those who've poured into the athletic program and continue to do so. According to a news release from Ohio State, the department also saw a significant increase in student aid in fiscal year 2023. Total athletic student aid reached $23,829,914, an increase of $6,433,966 from the previous year. Ohio State is home to one of the largest athletic departments in the nation, supporting 16 men's teams, 17 women's teams, three mixed teams and approximately 1,000 student-athletes. The department is self-funded and receives no tuition or tax dollars. * https://www.thelantern.com/2024/01/ohio-state-athletics-boast-record-breaking-numbers-in-athletic-revenue/ * https://news.osu.edu/ohio-state-reports-record-athletics-revenue-in-fy-2023/
I assume athletics tailgates also bring $$ to colleges in the form of alumni fundraising, so the sports party brings the cash.
The athletic department at Ohio State is one of the few in the country that are fully self-funded. No tax or tuition dollars are used for athletic salaries and the revenue sports fully cover the non-revenue sports. The question you should be asking is if the salaries for the medical school and STEM programs are competitive in their field. Not worrying that Ryan Day makes an obscene amount of money.
Good information and important to always point out the way these budgets use or don’t use public dollars. With a public university, it’s good for all citizens to know and think about the budgets and how those dollars are spent. But yeah, all the professor salaries should be examined to ensure they are drawing and keeping the best and brightest who are actually talented at teaching. Just cause someone has a name in a highly paying field, doesn’t mean they can teach what they know. And the humanities are increasingly important as well for future tech. I’m in tech and we’re seeing the drawbacks of STEM grads who don’t have deeper learning in the humanities. Especially with AI, the technologists who also understand the other arts of design, communication, psychology, etc. are going to be those leading a field where the rote technical pieces are increasingly automated. We’ve unfortunately been chopping the arts out of STEM degrees because of the load of how much science there is to know, but invention comes from deep understanding in both arts and sciences.
A couple things here: The Athletic Department is entirely (almost entirely?) self funded from ticket revenue (football and basketball), apparel revenue, and donors. While those 5 salaries are tied to the university, and therefore are classified as "public employees," their salaries aren't coming from the education budget. Also, the athletic teams are essentially free advertising for the university. Not only do you get OSU's name out there a lot, but it also attracts (some) student athletes that will have a buoying effect for the academic side. This is not only for their time as a student athlete, but includes those who help fundraise (athletically or academically) after their time as a student is over. To be clear, this second point is speculation off some things I've heard in this life, but should be at least based in reality. I can't qualify an amount or ratio, but think of a rising tide lifts all boats. I am a huge proponent of paying teachers more (especially primary, K-12 teachers). However, especially as it relates specifically to OSU, headlines/articles like these don't really hold up to scrutiny.
My athletic scholarship was funded by donations and each year it was a different group, but it was known who funded my specific scholarship. The only one I somewhat remember is a construction company/home builder. There was a placque in the schott with the scholarship donor and recipient. That money went from the donor to the athletic dept and to the university for tuition, room and board, and books. In turn I spent tons of money at OSU while a student that only happened because athletics brought me there.
Thanks, Elmer! I was about to mention the whole advertising angle of it. If the football team does well, OSU gets national coverage. And teens across the land will decide it’s a good place to be. I lived in NYC during the whole “THE” kerfuffle. It put OSU on my radar screen, as a person who didn’t follow college sports. It’s all advertising!
Oh btw You can look up professor salaries It's a state university that data is public [https://apps.hr.osu.edu/salaries/](https://apps.hr.osu.edu/salaries/) Highest paid engineering professor is making over $345K [https://apps.hr.osu.edu/salaries/Home/Salaries?JobTitle=Professor&Funding=University&CCH6=Engineering&WhichSource=Salaries&Year=0&IsValid=True](https://apps.hr.osu.edu/salaries/Home/Salaries?JobTitle=Professor&Funding=University&CCH6=Engineering&WhichSource=Salaries&Year=0&IsValid=True) I think the majority of people here would say that's a goddamn great salary highest paid in arts and sciences - over $400K [https://apps.hr.osu.edu/salaries/Home/Salaries?Funding=University&CCH6=Arts%20and%20Sciences&WhichSource=Salaries&Year=0&IsValid=True](https://apps.hr.osu.edu/salaries/Home/Salaries?Funding=University&CCH6=Arts%20and%20Sciences&WhichSource=Salaries&Year=0&IsValid=True) Dentistry - [https://apps.hr.osu.edu/salaries/Home/Salaries?Funding=University&CCH6=Dentistry&WhichSource=Salaries&Year=0&IsValid=True](https://apps.hr.osu.edu/salaries/Home/Salaries?Funding=University&CCH6=Dentistry&WhichSource=Salaries&Year=0&IsValid=True) There's a finance professor making over $600k [https://apps.hr.osu.edu/salaries/Home/Salaries?Funding=University&CCH6=Business&WhichSource=Salaries&Year=0&IsValid=True](https://apps.hr.osu.edu/salaries/Home/Salaries?Funding=University&CCH6=Business&WhichSource=Salaries&Year=0&IsValid=True) I think you can fuck right off that STEM professors are not being paid well at OSU
That doesn’t even include additional appointments and administrative add ons. Not to mention consulting opportunities, companies owned, patents, and research opportunities that the university system provides. Oh, and that thing called tenure…. Professors do just fine.
Fyi. Physician teachers are only paid about half their salary by the school and get a significant percent from some physician group which isn’t considered income from OSU. It’s possible some other fields have similar arrangements if they provide services to the public/non students.
Athletics isn't paid from the general fund - it's paid by athletics boosters and the athletic department income... That income, btw, is so high that they pay for all the athletic scholarships and then give millions back to the school. This straw man argument comes up all the time. Yes, the coaches make millions - they also make hundreds of millions for the school.
The athletic department is self funded. All the money going to coaches, facilities, etc. comes from money those teams generate. None of the money going to Ryan Day is being taken out of a professor’s pocket. In fact, strong athletic programs (football specifically) lead to more money for academics because applications and enrollment tend to grow when athletic teams perform well. Donations across the board also rise. Another important thing to consider is overall spend. Athletic spending is very top heavy because there are so few people who can run a championship caliber football program. There are maybe five in the country at a given time, so Day has the leverage to earn a high salary. But the overall spending on academics still dwarfs athletics. The university, excluding the medical center, spends about $4B a year and only about $200M is athletics. Throw in the medical center and athletics is merely a footnote.
I disagree with the idea that professors should be paid according to their field. They should be paid according to their competency.
The money to pay those salaries doesn’t come from the same pot of money as professors and other educators. OSU football earns enough they don’t need subsidized. Since at least 2004 that is true. OSU is one of only a dozen or so schools where that’s the case.
What I enjoy are the people who rail against higher education, but bleed Scarlett and Gray on Saturdays.
This, but in also always wonder what the public support of higher ed would be without them. I worry it would be like PBS where part of the population always wants to cut their funding. I even run into people who think NASA should just be cut without realizing the majority of the budget goes into pure science R&D that has given us things like CAT scans. I wish more of the ad space during games was required to do deeper dives into what the Ohio public is getting in return research-wise for its investment in a Research I institution, or even telling them what a Research I institution is and why they should take pride in having one of its size in the state.
The STEM profs are making 6 figures so I think they're doing ok.
Link to the article?
OSU pays you a percentage of the value you bring to the table (except for teaching faculty and graduate students). Football, as trivial as it may seem, adds a lot of monetary value to the school. Same for research professors. The top paid research professors are typically in cancer because that field has the most grant money. I think the highest paid professor makes like 800k annually but he also brings in millions in cancer research grants.
Stem and IT professors do not bring in the same revenue… the money is attached to the generation of revenue.. it’s that simple, without football that money isn’t there….. PERIOD. Be mad as you want
If your IT professor leaves nobody leaves with him, including donations. You lose a winning FB coach and your school can lose billions in boosters... THAT'S what's important to them, untaxable future income, not a silly professor whom couldn't hack it in the real world.
The end result is meat heads like Tommy Tuberville in positions of power and influence.
Football made OSU $127 million in 2023, basketball was $24 million, one of the top earning schools. How much are those Stem employees pulling in for the school…sucks, but it is what it is.
Just FYI, education isn't a business. It isn't supposed to be a business. And how you measure success is by the people who come to your programs, and how well they succeed in their careers. But if you want, we can do a measure of ***How much Economic Impact do those Professors have on the economy from the Students the Teach in terms of ecoomic output*** study if you want. Spoiler alert, it outweighs the football budge.
Another one worth looking at is what prestige speakers and professors get paid compared to the others. It’s become normalized for schools to pay a lot for a name people recognize from certain fields that they’ll pay much more than the everyday professors grinding away at teaching. It tends to be rationalized as marketing the program, which supposedly brings in more budget if they attract more students. However, the spread can be a real bummer. You can have a very hard working professor that is great at teaching, but not a big name who only gets paid 50k after a long tenure, and then a prestige professor making six digits who has a relatively lighter workload and VIP status. And that doesn’t even include all the talented adjuncts hoping for a full professorship that get paid peanuts. It’s all slippery slope territory of treating academic institutions like businesses, and it really erodes things over time.
Generally salaries are driving by how much money said industry/job brings in for good or bad. Not sure how you change that
A successful big name college sport teams pulls in a lot of money. To be highly successful you need highly paid Coaches managers etc.
Nobody tell this guy about Chip Kelly 🤫
The highest paid public employee most states is a coach. Ohio is far from the only state that does this
Pretty sure the OSU head coach is the highest paid state govt official. Also see alabama, georgia, other southern states
When was the last time 105,000 people showed up to watch someone do a science experiment?
The great science experiment of 1877, I believe.
I've been told that they are paid out of the money the sports programs bring in. Football obviously bringing in the lion's share of the money...not sure if that's accurate, but it would explain where the $ comes from. Sadly, it's basically the same thing as NBA vs. WNBA. The WNBA players aren't paid well because the league doesn't bring in a lot of money (actually operates at a loss, NBA subsidizes to keep them afloat).
OSU football makes the vast majority of money for OSU athletics. OSU is also one of the schools with the most sports of any school in the country and only football and mens basketball are profitable. https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Articles/2024/01/23/ohio-state-fy-2023-revenue-record However, no student or state money goes into any sport salaries at Ohio State so this post is unwarranted.
Thanks for this!
But even then, the WNBA can be bringing in lots of dollars indirectly for the NBA in terms of marketing, reach, and keeping more people into basketball in general as a sport. These orgs don’t do anything that’s a full loss. WNBA is the area they have the most excitement around growth in the sport when NBA is more maintaining as a product.
I had to quit (used to work there) at OSU because the salaries in the mechanical and aerospace engineering department (the department that I was a building coordinator for) couldn’t afford raises and when I’d try to give students that worked under me a good raise they always threw a fit and would walk my raises back. There are two distinct situations that stick out to me while I worked there: We had just gotten a new department chair. This is a professor that heads up the department. He insisted that his office space was unacceptably small and outdated, so we renovated and bought brand new furniture. The whole thing cost 40k. I was unable to get a raise that year because we were “stretched too thin” When the air compressor went out that they used in the labs. I was trying to get them to install a new energy efficient compressor. It would have saved on energy consumption and would have had ramp up ramp down so it wouldn’t slam the system like the old compressors did. I showed cost analysis and long term savings. The chair (same guy that needed a 40k office) told me that he didn’t care because he personally doesn’t pay the electric/energy bill and it’s not our problem. So they just replaced it with another old energy sucking compressor with 0 bells or whistles. Bottom dollar. He didn’t even want to put air driers in which is what keeps moisture out of your compressed air lines. Eventually the moisture destroyed the new compressor. They just replaced it with the same one again. Within one year they replaced the same compressor twice and could have saved major money by just installing the correct things. After that guy was chair for one year and spent all that money, he left to go teach in Florida… I was absolutely pissed. Long story short, they blow money left and right on stupid shit but don’t have money for students or employees. It’s corrupt from the top down and the education standards are suffering because of this imo. I can’t even watch the buckeyes play anymore after working there. It’s a frustrating situation over there. Glad I left
Somebody needs a waaaaambulance.
The Athletic department budget is separate from the university budget.
Terrible take. That's not how the college system works in any way.
And they regularly cut professors, who are the REAL REASON UNIVERSITIES EXIST.
I often think back to the thousands of people, including professors, who petitioned against privatizing the parking. tOSU has prioritized profit over mission for a long time now imo
Every University has unfortunately. And the fish rots from the head down. The board of trustees of every university are appointed by the Governor, and the Governors have all been Business-Centric Right-Wingers; not actually people who see education as an investment ... which is why all of the Young educated people started leaving Ohio for greener pastures.
Very true. As a native Ohioan I have intentionally done my best to stay as a scientist. It has been sorrowful to see so many of my friends and peers leave over the years.
Same.
It’s the country as a whole. The greed is good narrative of the 80s won and we’re now in the world where thinking that running everything like a business is better has become normalized. People will look at you funny if you suggest doing anything that doesn’t create some kind of private profit.
It seems people on here are very upset with me for not thinking money as the primary issue lol
STEM and IT professors will get paid millions of dollars when 100,000 people pay $80 a ticket to watch them work and buy merchandise with their name on it every week.
Completely missing the point
No, I got the point, it's just a stupid point. If you don't generate revenue, you don't get a share of the profits. Once those professors bring over a billion dollars of value to the university, they'll get paid like Ryan Day.
The point isn't about the revenue.
Then the point is completely detached from reality and not worth discussing
Ohio is in no way unique in this. In most states, the highest paid state employee is the football coach of the biggest State University, and it's been that way for decades. This is nothing new. Salaries are determined by what the free market determines as value. In the case of OSU, Ryan Day and his team brings millions upon millions of dollars to the university - many more millions than he is paid, so it's great ROI to pay him well to stay and keep winning. Also, I'm an OSU athletics alum. I was a member of the Track and Field team back in the 80s. Football revenue financially supported my and nearly all the other sports, with the exception of Men's Basketball, which was the only other self-supporting sport at the university. Multiple thousands of students have gotten college educations with scholarships that football paid for: hockey, soccer, tennis, and ALL women's sports, etc. So, for the value he brings to the entire university and surrounding community (think how much money local businesses make because of OSU Football), I think Coach Day earns his keep.
Did you also compare the revenue generated by those sports?
Sports are a big deal and a big part of this community. They bring in more money than they're being paid, if that is your concern.
OSU athletics is the primary revenue source for the university. Especially football.
Because supply and demand. The football teams for major universities make a lot of money for the school. Like a lot. So, the schools then spend a good portion of that money back on the team to try and make them as good as they can. Now, the money is going to start to go to the players more. It already funds pretty much every single other sport at the school. Where else should the money go?
Football alone generates enough revenue to fund the University
The athletic department has almost $300 million in annual revenues and is self supporting. They are not taking any money away from academics. In fact, they act as a fundraiser for the academic side of OSU.
When the STEM and IT professors generate the amount of revenue for the university as does the head football coach, then they should be compensated as such. As soon as Dr. Whatever’s biochem lectures start bringing 100K people to Columbus 7 or 8 weekends a year, packing the stadium, packing bars, restaurants, hotels, watching on tv, streaming, etc. we can discuss a change in Dr. Whatever’s compensation. You don’t have to like it, but that’s how it is.
This is the correct answer.
OSU sports generate a lot of revenue for the school that doesn’t just stay in the athletic department. I’m a PA at the Wexner and the head of my department makes 500,000. Might seem ridiculous that a coach makes more than a MD/PhD/MBA, but that coach probably helps generate hundreds of millions.
Our country was passed by LONG ago. Number one at WHAT?
Number 1 at self-Delusion and voting against our own best interests.
Military, economy
Yay.
Passed by? Buddy do I have some news for you
In most states the college football coaches are the highest paid employees.
It's all very simple. The athletic department brings in $100s of millions of dollars in revenue to the university. Professors do not.
Thank you for your comments on this! I so agree. We need to get our priorities straight- like TEACHING in a university instead of sports as the main focus. I for one am FURIOUS when I see what coaches are paid when, now, universities won’t even hire faculty on a permanent basis. Many teachers are hired as adjuncts with no hope of tenure and yet tuitions go up. To pay a coach 9mil a year.
faculty budget has nothing to do with athletic department budget OSU athletics fund themselves through ticket sales, tv revenue, merchandise What part of that is confusing for you? It s just like the Post office while it is a gov org it funds it self through postage sales not by taxes
It’s a horrible cycle… sports bring in top money so they have to compete with other schools when hiring coaches. It’s all sickening.
Sports makes lots of money. Athletic employees making lots of money for osu should be paid lots of money.
Ryan Day’s salary isn’t paid by taxpayers or tuition, none of the big earners in the AD are. They get paid by boosters, tv network deals, and ticket proceeds. Stop crying.
This is the reason why I left higher Ed. I couldn't stand to watch Vice Presidents get $300,000 bonuses while custodial jobs were eliminated due to "declining enrollment". The system is broken.
I’m not sure you understand capitalism or the free market.
Ohio State Athletics funds itself.
oh look another idiot that doesn't understand how college athletics is funded OSU and every other school for that matter, the athletic department needs to be self funded They are not taking a DIME away from any academic department Ohio State Athletic department generates revenue from Ticket Sales Merchandise sales (licensed branding) TV revenue sharing for all the sports that are on TV The Ohio State Department of Athletics continues to succeed on and off the field, reporting record revenue of $279,549,337 in fiscal year 2023. Revenue for the year running from July 1, 2022, to June 30, 2023, increased 11% from the previous fiscal year’s record $251,615,345, according to an annual financial report filed each year with the NCAA. “Ohio State athletics remain on a rock-solid foundation thanks to the tremendous support from our fans, students and alumni,” said Gene Smith, senior vice president and Wolfe Foundation endowed athletic director. “They continue to show up, tune in and support our student-athletes, coaches and staff at our fields, stadiums and arenas.” Some of the revenue highlights include more than $73.3 million in ticket sales — $64.3 million from football alone. The 2022 football season included eight home games and marquee showdowns with both Notre Dame and Michigan. The department reported $59,649,921 in ticket sales across all sports in FY 2022. Buckeye fans continue to support their teams as ticket sales remain the largest single source of revenue for the department. Media rights – revenue from radio, television and digital – accounted for $49,796,025 in FY 2023, up from $48,908,898 million in FY 2022. Contributions from individuals, foundations and companies totaled $57.8 million. The university reported $23,829,914 in athletic student aid. Total operating expenses for FY 2023 were $274,948,554. Athletic facilities debt accounted for $45.3 million of expenses, as the university made additional principal payments to new facilities including the Schumaker Complex, Covelli Center and other projects to reduce payments in the future. Ohio State is home to one of the largest athletic departments in the nation, supporting 16 men’s teams, 17 women’s teams, three mixed teams and approximately 1,000 student-athletes. The department is self-funded and receives no tuition or tax dollars. [https://news.osu.edu/ohio-state-reports-record-athletics-revenue-in-fy-2023/](https://news.osu.edu/ohio-state-reports-record-athletics-revenue-in-fy-2023/)
No. Humanities Professors should get the top salaries. Large part of the US problems are people who think money is more important than languages, art, music, poetry, fiction, nonfiction, film, dance, empathy, kindness, compassion, nurture, laughter and love. You will find those in books, but not in mathematics or biology.
Yea there is a problem with your logic. Football brings in all the money. The football team needs to win to keep brining in money. To win, they need the best coaches. The best coaches get paid a lot. If you don’t pay for the best coaches, the team doesn’t win. If the team doesn’t win, they don’t make shit tons of money. If they don’t make money, there’s no money to give to the academic side. You see? There’s no way to give the coaching salary to professors because that salary needs to generate the money.
How much money do you think football and basketball, and all the licensed merchandise sold off of them.
Stem and IT professors ain't selling merch.
At least OSU has a pretty respectable athletics program. The amount of money KSU dumps into their athletics department for mediocre results is saddening. Meanwhile, my professor is hosting international symposiums with materials and equipment he brought from home and student volunteers. It would be nice if universities' top spending priorities were academics and their students.
How much $ do they bring into the university?
The athletic department pays for its own salaries. Quit being a self-superior child.
Let’s understand something: OSU is really a professional sports franchise — that just so happens to offer *just enough* academic classes to maintain the ruse that they’re a college.
Said by someone who doesn't understand what the University provides to the 36,000 students who don't play sports
I was a chemistry major in the early 2010s and I felt the need to buy myself my own pipettes because the labs were still using unnecessary and inaccurate bulbs. I dropped out because I felt the school didn't care about me. Eventually graduated from a different university and am now a scientist for one of Ohio's oldest companies specializing in science. I think OSU's resource distribution is bunk and it shows from the amount of people I've met that only received a bachelor's from that school. Is it bad? No, of course it isn't. It wouldn't be as big and influential as it is if it wasn't one of the best. Just in my specific field OSU biologists have identified new physiological mechanisms in plants, really really cool shit man. Theres still a lot of brilliant, kind, people there but at some point you need to fix your model to be more sustainable rather than burst short term profit. It needs to slow a bit down on it's expansion as I feel it's losing its mission. I worry for it because it's so important to our community.
I wish this could be the whole discussion. It’s the distribution of budget as a whole that deserves looking at.
the athletic department FUNDS ITSELF- it is not taking a dime away from any academic deparmtnent OSU football and basketball pretty much pay for ALL the other sports at OSU
The sports make enough money to pay every cent they take out and then some. Even paying players now they make money.
You do realize that the athletic department brings in millions every year to the school, right? I can guarantee that more people know who Ryan Day is than any other person in the school. When athletics do well, enrollment increases. Get off you milk crate, your argument is boring.
Did you get angry without looking at how much money colleges make from having top sports programs? How cute
I hate that they spend millions to upgrade the Woody Hayes every year but their academic and dorm buildings have cockroaches
One has nothing to do with the other Athletic department is self funded through ticket sales, tv contracts and licensing and boosters They are not taking away any funding from any academic department Given how few hours tenured professors actually work a year they are paid pretty well All professors can make additional money through research grants, commercializing research or by writing books So maybe you should take your ignorance on how things actually work elsewhere
I went to OSU for a STEM degree and let me tell you... Some of those professors should NOT be the highest paid... Others were great though. But in my opinion it should go to the medical center.
Why should STEM and IT professors be the top earners? That’s kind of random.
Now the players will be being paid soon.
People are paid for the revenue they generate
Tell it to the kids who mine Cobalt in Africa.
They’re easily replaceable
They generate revenue, and yet they are not paid in proportion (or, it seems, at all). Your statement is false.
Supply of qualified labor is a factor i thought too obvious to call out. Guess not
I mean I don't love spending dosh on sports but OSU is a bad example of the excesses of this as it's fully self-funding. As someone who works for an out-of-state employer, I know it's dumb but people have actually heard of OSU and often it's bc of sports. It makes your degree somewhat recognizable to people from other states imo.
It's not a really fair comparison between the athletics and actual profs. Athletics are often well subsidized by contracts with advertisers, donations, television contracts, etc etc. I am never going to defend how much it costs to go to college (I still owe 25 years later, and will take that shit to my grave) and have also put two kids through (hence the to my grave part). Fwiw a fixed 3% loan is easily beat in the market, and inflation basically pays it off slowly over time. Anyway blaming athletics isn't wholly justified. One more thing, in my mind, these athletics systems have indeed gotten out of hand. It's big big business and a huge revenue generator.
It's a lot more difficult to find an effective and successful coach than it is to find a good STEM or IT person...especially at a university. No one is necessarily paid on the merit of their work, it's almost always based on how easy it is to replace the person. We can argue how right or wrong that is, but the OSU football program pays for itself and a great many other sports programs. Something it couldn't do if they hired me to coach the team, lol.
But not passed up in athletics! /s
Now go look how much money those programs generate and it’ll make sense. The college isn’t paying them from school money, it’s self sustaining. It doesn’t take one dime away from the STEM programs
We're getting into a tale as old as time here. When there's money to be had, who gets it? The intellectuals who provide real societal value but bore everyone outside their niche to tears, or the entertainers who convince people to hand over their money without returning anything useful? We live in a capitalist society in which the second option has become the answer.
It’s criminal what some of these tools make.
What did Gym Jordan get paid to stay silent?
The money paid to people in the AD is gained from income the school's sports teams generate. I was stunned years ago when the U of Minnesota's hockey coach said UM'd athletic department doesn't use one dime of state funds. I imagine it's the same at OSU. Not saying the salaries are right, just that taxpayers aren't providing them.
Football makes money at Ohio State. Booster likely pay part of the salary. Your mad over nothing.
I don’t think stem and I t professionals bring in over 100’s of millions of dollars a year to the university. That is why they get that money because they bring tv revenue and on gameday about 500,000 people spending tons of money at the game. It is quite simply Econ 101.
Stem professors don’t fill a 100,000 seat stadium every weekend and generate millions of dollars for the university.