The United States is obsessed with college football.
One in four Americans, some 75 million people, follow it regularly.
The seven most-viewed programs on cable were college football games.
The end-of-the-season rankings are arbitrary, subjective and consume the lives of millions.
For Mississippi State University — which finished 11th in the final Associated Press poll — the 2014-15 season was historic, its highest ranking since 1940
.
Florida State University, last year’s national champion, finished fifth, tied with Michigan State University.
UCLA barely edged its way into the top ten, finishing tenth. The University of Louisville was ranked a distant 24th.
By another ranking, one that is not arbitrary or subjective and seeks to measure educational quality, UCLA crushed the competition, the University of Louisville finished second, and Mississippi State and Florida State finished at the back of the pack.
The Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, an organization of current and former college presidents, created a
database
that tracks academic spending per full-time undergraduate student at more than 220 NCAA Division I public schools.
The database, first made available online in December 2013, has attracted relatively little public attention. This is surprising. The database, covering the years 2005 to 2013, allows a user to examine academic spending per student — and athletic spending per athlete — thus providing a fairer way of comparing a school like Ohio State University and its large undergraduate enrollment of 41,409 with a smaller school such as Mississippi State and its undergraduate enrollment of 15,593 in 2013.
CityBeat examined the 2013 inflated-adjusted academic spending — including faculty salaries, departmental research and student services — for each full-time undergraduate student at the 22 public universities that finished in the top 25 of the AP’s final 2014-15 college football poll.
UCLA’s academic spending per student in 2013 was $52,584, three-and-a-half times more than the $14,979 median for all public Football Bowl Subdivision schools.
Claire Winter, a second-year student attending UCLA on a a soccer scholarship, is not surprised. “UCLA is a very good school,” Winter told CityBeat. “Professors are always available even in big classes.”
Over the past decade, UCLA increased its academic spending per student 36 percent — more than any of the other 21 football powers examined by CityBeat. UCLA officials accomplished this without forcing students to pay an exorbitant sports subsidy. In 2013, each full-time undergraduate student at UCLA paid an annual subsidy of less than $92 to the school’s athletic department, records show.
The University of Louisville was next to the bottom in the AP football poll but finished second in academic spending per student at $22,744. Tom Jurich, who’s overseen the U of L Athletic Department since 1997, said he and other school officials understand why students come to college.
“Academics are everything,” he told CityBeat.
Three Big Ten schools ranked in the top five in academic spending per student. Ohio State University was third, followed by the University of Wisconsin and Michigan State University.
In 2013, Ohio State spent $22,592 educating each full-time undergraduate — 50 percent more than the FBS median. And Ohio State did not charge students a dime to subsidize its athletic department, records show.
“We get no general fund money and we don’t charge student fees,” Ohio State Athletic Director Gene Smith told CityBeat. “We are blessed with Buckeye Nation being so supportive and how they buy tickets and make donations.”
Several Southern football powers fared poorly when it came to educational spending.
Of the six schools with the lowest academic spending per full-time undergraduate student, three are in the Southeastern Conference (Mississippi State University, the University of Georgia and the University of Mississippi) and one is in the Atlantic Coast Conference (Florida State University).
Of the 22 schools examined by CityBeat, Mississippi State ranked last. Between 2005 and 2013, its inflation-adjusted academic spending per student dropped 15 percent to $9,673 — 35 percent less than the FBS median.
Sid Salter, a spokesperson for Mississippi State, told CityBeat he was not aware of the Knight Commission findings but said they are in line with other studies of the school’s academic spending. “We are doing more with less,” he said.
Between 2005 and 2013, Florida State’s inflation-adjusted academic spending per student rose 11 percent to $11,856 but was still almost 21 percent below the FBS median.
Browning Brooks, a Florida State spokesperson, challenged the Knight Commission findings, arguing the information “doesn’t sound accurate.”
Like Salter, Brooks said Florida State is efficiently run and making the most of every dollar spent. “We are doing the most with the dollars we have,” Brooks said.
The
, which specializes in analyzing university spending, produced the database using statistics reported by universities to the U.S. Department of Education. The Delta Cost Project is part of the
American Institutes for Research,
the world’s largest social science research organization.
For more information on the KNIGHT COMMISSION ON INTERCOLLEGIATE ATHLETICS, visit knightcommission.org.
This article appears in May 6-12, 2015.
