Not your “boss”. Just making a suggestion. He is very approachable. And he will tell you where Miami basketball stands, not with teams outside our conference, but within the MAC. Things other MAC basketball programs have, ours does not. If you don’t know, Steele’s brother is John Groce at Akron. One of his closest friends is Rob Senderoff at Kent. And to DG and anyone else who thinks commenting on funding mens basketball is somehow a comment against funding the various academic campaigns, it is not. They are not mutually exclusive.
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Well, our issue of the Miamian finally arrived today, and apparently the OP must have missed page 38. It features an exciting full page action shot of the 1910 pushball match between the freshman and sophomores. Come on, MightyMU!
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While I’m sure it was a great event for all participants, it didn’t occur to me that it could actually be sanctioned as a MU sporting competition. In my day, male freshman pulled off panty raids. Or so I was told.
Results of tonight’s championship game aside, TCU’s run to the CFB final has apparently upped the number of early applications to the school by 31% this admissions cycle. Neuheisel mentioned it on Full Ride today pointing out that building a successful football as a university’s “front porch” is highly beneficial to the overall institution. He cited nearly $1.5 billion in “earned advertising value” TCU has received this fall because of Horned Frog success on the gridiron.
The same thing happened to Miami of Florida during and after their dynasty. Success in football helped the U leap ahead of the original Miami in its national stature.
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Revenue sports, primarily CFB, has become the brand of many universities. Alabama enrollment has grown nearly 40% since their 2009 title and Clemson has grown nearly 20% since their 2016 championship. Not only do they have more paying students but they have substantially more applicants which has allowed them to improve their academic rankings. While this is not the only catalyst for enrollment and status growth, it is a proven model.
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So would it be expected that Miami’s academic excellence “slippage” may be due in any way to the continued domination (up to a point) of the OSU and the recent arrival on the college FB marque landscape of UC?
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I don’t know that I subscribe a “slippage” in academic excellence as much as I believe that others have improved their positions. I think that there is a difference. And I have no proof but it is certainly feasible that both universities have benefitted from their success in CFB.
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I would be curious to see the numbers for non Power 5 schools and whether success in FB or BB translates to higher number of applications etc. I would expect it does.
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Likely in the money they can offer professors unless that’s somehow regulated by an entity I’m not aware of.
According to the statistics listed on Miami’s wikipedia page, the 21-22 class had an 88.6% acceptance rate compared to a 65.4% acceptance rate 5 years prior in the 16-17 class. The yield has dropped 2.5% in that time as well, which is the amount of students who actually attend compared to the amount who are accepted. Selectivity plays a major role in a school’s academic standing.
I’m assuming Miami’s ease on selectivity is financially motivated as the covid years were hard on many universities. That’s just my speculation though.
when we compare rankings are we using us news and world report?
As to selectivity…seems we’re accepting more and more students every year. Back in the olden days when I was there there were, I think, about 12-13,000 of us. Now it’s what…about 20,000 or so on campus?
May be we’re not getting any more applications but accepting a lot more of what we get. Seems the grades, test scores etc are still up there. Average ACT 28-29 or so.
Alabama made a conscious decision to drastically increase out-of-state enrollment in order to raise money. They do a fair amount of recruiting out here in suburban Southern California to well-off white kids who don’t get into UCs and think they’re too good to go to a Cal State.
I don’t doubt athletics plays a marketing role there, but it isn’t a straight line between football success and student body size.
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The line may not be straight but there is a line. Alabama has targeted areas across the country where people have the means to pay out of state tuition. They also offer a very high level of scholarship to top performing out of state students. There is little doubt that their athletic success has played a significant role in gaining the commitment from these new students.
Not student body size, but applications.
There’s a paper (I think done at Harvard) where they found a formula that estimates the number of applications based on the win total delta from one season to the next. And it’s not just applications that improve. @BTB30 is right, the line isn’t straight, but there’s a line and it goes up with wins.
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Did MU see this sort of improvement after we finished ten in the country in football?
I’m pretty certain my grades and ACT score from 1967 wouldn’t get me in now.
Hi everyone. I am a faculty member, and this is my first post here, although I have been a “silent observer” since the “test” page.
Yes, Miami deliberately increased the number of students to increase revenue. It also reduced faculty (visiting professors) and some administrative positions to decrease costs. The situation was so ugly that we, the faculty, had our research accounts frozen. We literally had to ask permission from our Chairs and Deans to buy even a cheap book. The university hopes to change that acceptance rate by increasing the number of applicants (you might have noticed that applications are free of charge now). Our rankings next year will likely be slightly better because of that, but only slightly, as the student/faculty ratio remains unchanged.
The biggest problem we face, in my opinion, is discounting. A tiny fraction of Miami students actually pay the sticker price. Like most universities out there, Miami is heavily discounting tuition, even for international students. A solution to this problem is to find donors willing to donate money for scholarships, thus indirectly paying for the sticker price. This explains why “scholarships” is one of the four cornerstones of the 1B USD campaign.
Why isn’t sports one of those four cornerstones? There are likely several reasons, but here are two of them:
- It is much, much easier to ask for money from big donors to pay for students’ education (scholarship) than to, say, rebuild Millet Hall.
- There were many faculty members who got really angry due to some decisions made by the previous Provost during the pandemic. In university-wide meetings, some of these folks asked the university to go Division 2, stop paying coaches, and one even asked publicly to end athletics altogether. Some of the people strongly against collegiate athletics are now leading the efforts toward faculty and staff unionization. The Provost had to put together and send all faculty information on why ending collegiate athletics was undesirable. Now, picture how these faculty members would feel if the president came forward and said that athletics was one of the university’s priorities.
I hope I was able to provide some relevant info, and thank you for keeping this board up and running.
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It’s fine for them to be upset, but after looking at study after study showing football and basketball impact academic rankings and fundraising, they’d be wise to understand abandoning college athletics only hurts their position. At some point, the person in charge has to steer the ship. The ability to bury your head in the sand in the face of data isn’t exactly one that should be valued in professors. I’d prefer they not hold the university I got my degree from hostage.
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So allow me to provide an interpretative summary of some of the claims being tossed around here. Spending on athletics will beget more winning, which will beget more applications, which will lead to more applications being rejected, which will result in the university increasing its degree of selectivity, which will result in a perception that the university is more academically rigorous even in the absence of more demonstrable metrics of academic rigor or improvement? Is that about right?
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