It’s unusually high. I haven’t chased down the numbers in a few years but most of the MAC uses student fees to a far greater degree than other D1 schools because they lack other sources of revenue. And Miami’s is high even by MAC standards because we sponsor a more fulsome slate of sports.
Edited to add: This article is old but will give you a directional sense of scale as well as how much MAC spending ramped up between about 2005 and 2015.
I was amongst the MHT’s who were enthusiastic about Mr. Treadwell’s hiring. I started to have misgivings, however, as he assembled his staff.
Whether due to buget constraints or just preferences the coaches seemed incredibly inexperienced. My recollection is that every single member of the staff was stepping up a level of responsibility. They were either position coaches being promoted to coordinator or moving from non FBS schools upward. Success seemed unlikely.
I would pretty much put the blame for the terrible drop off in Miami sports after the 90’s directly on the board of trustees and the President. I often posted that the total lack of support and funding at that time seemed as if it was a deliberate effort to destroy our programs. Certainly there is a 100% turnaround in support now. Pride in Miami students and graduates was at an all time low.
I really feel that it is coming back now, but the faculty and others attacking the new arena certainly shows that there are still forces working against our success. We need to excel on the playing fields just as much as in the classroom. That was always the recipe for Miami greatness and pride.
Playing “The University Trustee, President, Athletic Director, Head Coach Selection-Hiring Game” is akin to investing in stocks…some turn out great, some flame out…
There are no guarantees, no magic formulas…
I don’t believe that at all. If you take a look at the article I appended to my post from last night, I think it’s more plausible that the trustees were hesitant to expand athletic spending to the degree necessary to keep up with the money arms race going on in Division 1. You’d likely be hard pressed to find any other university department where expenditures grew 75% in a decade. But faced with the choice between blowing out the budget and becoming perennially noncompetitive, Miami eventually blew out the budget.
This is a problem all over the bottom half of FBS. I did a bit of nosing around and found a doctoral dissertation analyzing the subsidy issue for the 2005-15 time frame. This table is a pretty good summary, and I’ve linked the entire thing below.
https://scholar.smu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=simmons_depl_etds
The amount current students are being asked to pay (i.e. their parents are being asked to pay) to fund athletics is ridiculous.
When my kids were still in college, I used to refer to our old Volvo wagon as the “Tuitionmobile” because we were going to keep driving it as long as I was paying tuition. They’re a relatively common sight here in the DC 'burbs – cars that are ten-plus years old featuring an array of stickers from various colleges. And the stickers from whatever ridiculously expensive place you’re funding help cover the dents in the bumper.
Not trying to buy an argument, but IMHO, sports are a good draw for getting Miami’s name out to a national audience, including prospective students and employers. Also, the kids these days want sports and Miami plays D1. It seems (again IMO) that they’re positioning themselves as competitors against similar non-football power schools.
Ask the prospective student in a target audience outside of Ohio (e.g., Chicago, East Coast) …
“Ever hear of Miami of Ohio?” Yep.
“Ever hear of Kenyon, Wittenberg or Augustana?” Where???
(also hearing that Miami is now aggressively marketing in Texas, too …)
I don’t know about Augustana, but Kenyon and Wittenberg face very different circumstances. Wittenberg’s enrollment is down 30% in the last five years, and they’re making material cuts to programs and staff to stay afloat.
Kenyon is doing fine (it’s more selective than Miami) with a good US News ranking and a historically good reputation among East Coast prep types. The football sucks, but most kids who apply there are probably more interested in their D3 powerhouse swimming program or adjacencies to the Kenyon Review, which is a long-running and nationally prominent literary journal.
Are you saying that D3 schools are lesser known because they don’t have big-time sports? Ask those same prospective students if they’ve heard of Emory, NYU, UChicago, Carnegie Mellon, Harvey Mudd, Willams, or Case Western, and I’m sure you’ll get a response of “yes, but I didn’t apply…I couldn’t get in.” IMO, I don’t think Miami’s recent success in the MAC moves the needle for anyone outside of the Midwest (or, maybe, even Ohio). We need to be more competitive on a national stage (e.g., get some “Tomahawk” wins) for folks outside of the Midwest to know who we are (at least from a sports perspective). We used to do that with some regularity…not so much anymore.
I have never heard of Harvey Mudd. Dont be so sure on what schools prospective students have heard of. My son goes to Miami - I am sure he has never heard of Williams and I doubt he has heard of Emory
Harvey Mudd College is a highly ranked private liberal arts college in California, focused on science and engineering.
The Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Stags, not to be confused with their archrival Pomona-Pitzer Sagehens, who once employed Gregg Popovich.
Have a relative who is starting Miami this fall, and sports played a sizable role in his selection.
The schools you listed are very strong academically (more so than Miami) but the student vibe and achievement goals are also much different. Kinda like comparing Virginia Tech to CalTech. Both are great schools but CalTech is by far a study all day/everyday whereas VT kids want more of a social life.
Grinnell in Iowa is an awesome academic school, Coe College is also an above average academic institution as is Carleton College in MN. They don’t offer D1 sports so many prospective students haven’t heard much (if any) about them.
Carleton got ~8000 applicants this year, which was more than enough to be quite selective (17.5% admissions rate) to yield their typical entering class of around 500. It’s an amazing place. We’ve got both friends and family who have gone there and had a great experience.
My older son looked at most of the top national liberal arts colleges during his search, including Carleton, Grinnell, and Williams, so we got pretty familiar with them. And then he did early decision at Duke, so go figure.
Harvey mudd’s fight song.
(Should be at least)
You know who is a top ranked school you didn’t mention, in the same athletic conference as Emory, the UAA, Washington University. And for those that pay attention, one of the top D3 athletic programs-multiple national titles in multiple sports. Current athletic director-Anthony Azama-formerly at Miami. He replaced John Schael as AD when Schael retired. Schael is in Miami’s athletic HOF as a wrestler. Weeb Eubank, part of Miami’s Cradle of Coaches also coached football at Washington University. Top 5 ranked medical school, 14th ranked law school, and count among their alums some pain in the ass poster on MHT! 
They also have a crazy basketball philosophy where they only shoot 3s and don’t play defense.
Have they won much that way? That seems ill conceived. Hmmm….now I’m a gonna go ask my friend the internets
It’s “The System.” David Arsenault Jr. has continued it after taking over as coach from his dad. Grinnell basketball apparently was horrible when Sr decided to move to it. They play between 15 and 20 kids and rotate lines like a hockey team. It’s all running, pressing, and shooting threes. They typically have a winning record in their league but struggle against the best teams. But it’s a clever way to draw attention to basketball and keep the roster stocked at a “nerd school” that would otherwise struggle to get players.
