The House Committee on Education and the Workforce has issued a letter to the U.S. comptroller general to consider how college athletics spending impacts the cost of tuition and fees.
On Monday, Chairman Tim Walberg of Michigan requested that Gene Dodaro and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) explore the potential consequences stemming from the billions of dollars that Division I and Division II colleges spend annually on athletics.
Walberg begins the letter by noting how Division I schools spend approximately 40 percent of $17 billion annually on financial aid for student athletes and compensation for coaches. Similarly, Division II institutions spent over $1 billion toward financial aid and coach salaries in 2022.
”A large driver of athletic program spending is the pressure to
attract prospective college athletes,” Walberg writes.
Pointing to the amount of recruiting expenses doubling among D-I colleges from 2012 to 2022, as well as the large amounts of money used to pay for new facilities and coaches in order “to entice student-athletes,” Walberg notes the growing pressure among institutions to compete due to the recent implementation of NIL (name, image and likeness) deals.
”Given these developments, I write to request the
Government Accountability Office (GAO) examine how this spending is impacting
postsecondary education,” Walberg continues.
”These new policies
may put further pressure on schools to spend money on high-quality athletic programs to recruit
and retain the best athletes,” the chairman says of revenue sharing implementation for the 2025-2026 academic year.
Walberg also raises concerns over the “gap” between the amount that schools generate from athletics, and the amount they rely on from student fees to cover expenses.
”Ninety-two percent of all Division I athletics programs required
student fees and institutional support to bridge the gap between generated revenue and total
athletic expenses,” he states. ”At the Division II level, the median revenue
generated for college athletics was less than $1 million while the median total expenses were
over $6 million requiring student fees and institutional support to bridge the gap.”
”As you know, federal student aid provided under Title IV of the Higher Education Act (Title IV)
provides students with grants and loans to cover the costs of tuition, fees, and other education related expenses,” Walberg says. ”At the same time, the data on spending on college athletics raises distinct
questions about how schools fund their athletic programs and the extent to which Title IV
student aid subsidizes these costs through students’ tuition and fees.”
As a result, Walberg requests that GAO answer a series of questions, including how colleges fund their athletic programs, as well as, ”How does the recruitment of student-athletes … contribute to athletic program expenses and the cost of
postsecondary education at Division I and Division II colleges?”
Serving his eight term in the House, Walberg was officially named committee chairman in December.
This article was originally published at campusreform.org
