I'm getting a bit annoyed by the publicity that BYU's $4,500 stipend is getting. It seems to me it's an attempt to make an unfair comparison to other schools to gain some advantage in recruiting. This morning I heard a BYU coach say that certainly he would use the stipend as a way to try and close the deal with a recruit.
That BYU could so easily come up with this type of money when Utah's AD says he'll raise it from donors and USU has to get it from the taxpayer makes me suspicious as to its origins. BYU makes no bones about the fact that no tithing dollars are used for BYU athletics. This is straight from the athletic department's website.
The university does provide a small amount of funding, but no tithing dollars from members of the LDS Church are used to run the athletic programs.
This claims seems just a bit disingenuous even if it's just a "small amount" of university funding since BYU is financed by the Church and the Church by member's tithing. As they say in the finance world, "money is fungible" - you can't specify a certain dollar once thrown in a pot comes out for a specific use. But what's even more curious about this claim is that BYU's tuition is highly subsidized by the LDS Church and therefore the Athletic Department is already getting something for a discounted value that they are passing along to scholarshipped athletes.
Here's a rather crude attempt that I made to try and place a value on this subsidy. What I did was investigate what the total cost of attendance was at other private colleges. These colleges aren't trying to earn a profit and so these numbers should come close to approximating what it costs a school each year for one student who is on a full-ride scholarship. The average for 4 private schools that I looked at (TCU, Ithaca College, Loyala Marymount and Rice) was $54,622 a year. BYU's cost, weighted for 80% LDS and 20% non LDS (an approximate athlete composition) is $18,882. The difference of $35,740 is coming from somewhere and must coming be from the school's owner. Now just maybe Brigham Young University is the greatest manager of a school in the world and their cost to run the school is much less, I just don't know. But to be fair I have to consider the possibility.
Finding numbers on BYU's budget is difficult but this author made an attempt back in 2011 to back out the tuition cost to the athletic department. He figured that tuition allocation was 21% of $22,000,000 or $4.62 million. If you assume 300 scholarshipped athletes, that figures out to be $15,400 per scholarship that the athletic department pays the school, leading me to believe that my current $18,882 estimate for this year is pretty close.
So if these numbers are realistic, that means the University's (LDS Church) subsidy for BYU athletics would be 300 times $35,740 or $10.7 million. Throw in another $4,500 for 300 athletes and it brings the total to just over $12 million.
I'll admit that I really don't know if this analysis is correct and I know there's some very sharp people on this thread who can shed light on whether I'm completely full of it or not. There's also the perplexing matter of BYU TV injecting money into the athletic program but I couldn't find anything on that. If any of you have any thoughts on this matter, do share.
That BYU could so easily come up with this type of money when Utah's AD says he'll raise it from donors and USU has to get it from the taxpayer makes me suspicious as to its origins. BYU makes no bones about the fact that no tithing dollars are used for BYU athletics. This is straight from the athletic department's website.
The university does provide a small amount of funding, but no tithing dollars from members of the LDS Church are used to run the athletic programs.
This claims seems just a bit disingenuous even if it's just a "small amount" of university funding since BYU is financed by the Church and the Church by member's tithing. As they say in the finance world, "money is fungible" - you can't specify a certain dollar once thrown in a pot comes out for a specific use. But what's even more curious about this claim is that BYU's tuition is highly subsidized by the LDS Church and therefore the Athletic Department is already getting something for a discounted value that they are passing along to scholarshipped athletes.
Here's a rather crude attempt that I made to try and place a value on this subsidy. What I did was investigate what the total cost of attendance was at other private colleges. These colleges aren't trying to earn a profit and so these numbers should come close to approximating what it costs a school each year for one student who is on a full-ride scholarship. The average for 4 private schools that I looked at (TCU, Ithaca College, Loyala Marymount and Rice) was $54,622 a year. BYU's cost, weighted for 80% LDS and 20% non LDS (an approximate athlete composition) is $18,882. The difference of $35,740 is coming from somewhere and must coming be from the school's owner. Now just maybe Brigham Young University is the greatest manager of a school in the world and their cost to run the school is much less, I just don't know. But to be fair I have to consider the possibility.
Finding numbers on BYU's budget is difficult but this author made an attempt back in 2011 to back out the tuition cost to the athletic department. He figured that tuition allocation was 21% of $22,000,000 or $4.62 million. If you assume 300 scholarshipped athletes, that figures out to be $15,400 per scholarship that the athletic department pays the school, leading me to believe that my current $18,882 estimate for this year is pretty close.
So if these numbers are realistic, that means the University's (LDS Church) subsidy for BYU athletics would be 300 times $35,740 or $10.7 million. Throw in another $4,500 for 300 athletes and it brings the total to just over $12 million.
I'll admit that I really don't know if this analysis is correct and I know there's some very sharp people on this thread who can shed light on whether I'm completely full of it or not. There's also the perplexing matter of BYU TV injecting money into the athletic program but I couldn't find anything on that. If any of you have any thoughts on this matter, do share.
