Big-time athletics may be raising college tuition, too | READER COMMENTARY
As usual, Matthew Crenson offers some very good reasons why college tuition has doubled in the past 30 years (“Why is college so expensive? One answer: ‘administrative bloat,'” March 3).
I cannot help but wonder how much the NCAA Division I football and basketball contracts with major TV networks have contributed to the outrageous growth of college tuition.
Realizing that sounds counterintuitive, I would offer that the schools who receive those millions of dollars from those very lucrative NCAA contracts have been able to increase not just the salaries of the members of the athletic departments, but other members of the faculty as well. This, in turn, makes teaching positions at these colleges very attractive to possible faculty members.
Schools, without athletic teams benefiting from these NCAA monies, are also seeking the best possible faculty members to educate their students. However, in order to compete for these potential faculty members, they must look to other sources for the dollars to support better faculty salaries. Ultimately, the most easily adjustable source of money is student tuition.
Each college wants to stay competitive tuition-wise and offer the best faculty. But they are all competing against the schools with NCAA Division I football and basketball teams, the teams with the very lucrative TV contracts bringing monies into their schools.
Would be very interesting to compare tuition rise to the increase in the TV contract monies over the past 60 years, college by college!
— Sarah A. Riley, Timonium
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