Thursday, May 9, 2013

Most Depressing Education Related Infographic

As a scholar, I find this graphic utterly depressing.  As a citizen who formerly resided in many of these states, I find this graphic a dramatic display of twisted priorities:





This is just awful on a stick.  Especially since bigtime college sports do not make money for the rest of the university.  It may sometimes pay for the big time college sports and sometimes it may pay for the smaller sports, but it does not lead to universities having more money for research and teaching and whatever else.  And, of course, the money does not really go to the student athletes as we well know.

So, if I had the power to enact one incredibly anti-market law in the US, aside from perhaps limiting the pay that execs get, it might be this: allow universities to collude to manage the salaries of coaches.  Perhaps set their wages to be no more than match the highest prof's salary.  Allow them to still make money on merch and the lame tv/radio shows, but limit how much money comes out of the universities' revenues (athletic and otherwise) to pay these folks.  There are limited spots in the NBA and NFL for coaches so you will get mighty fine coaches on less salary.

One last note--hey, gotta love Nevada.


H/T to Kyle Saunders.

4 comments:

doug gibler said...

Steve,

I saw this too. I was appalled at first and then thought about it more. There are so few coaches that make it, this graphic is more than a bit deceiving. Let's take the average salary of a football coach versus the average salary of a PhD in--I don't know-- political science. My guess is that the PhD wins easily.

Hope all is well.

Doug

JWells said...

Unfortunately, at LSU football (and baseball) not only pay for themselves, and the other sports, they also kick money back into academics, so that argument doesn't hold water here. (I've heard that only happens at one other NCAA university in the country.)

Steve Saideman said...

JWells,
How about this: sports generates income for non-sports in only a few programs. There will always be exceptions but the popular belief that college sports are net income generators is the myth that needs to be de-mythed.

R. William Ayres said...

Even more remarkable about this - in Ohio, Gordon Gee (president of Ohio State) has a base salary near $900,000 and a total compensation package that is nearly $2 million. And he's STILL not the highest-paid public employee in the state...