NBC News recently published a story about college students paying a required fee to support their school’s athletic department. The story found that some schools charge the fee but don’t tell the students it is part of their tuition, while other schools post the amount in some out-of-the-way place on their web site.
In some cases, the fee was almost 10% of the student’s total tuition, while at other schools, the fee was either negligible or non-existent.
The writers of the article were able to get the data from most schools just by asking. But in some cases, they had to file open records requests. And even then, some schools either refused to provide the information, or just didn’t respond to the reporters.
The highest dollar amount athletic fee was at Virginia Military Institute, where it was $3,340 a year and made up 43% of the athletic department budget. The highest percentage support of fees for athletics was at Cleveland State University, where the student athletic fees made up 85% of the athletic department budget.
What about Kentucky schools?
We pulled out the numbers for the Kentucky universities that were included in the table. Would any of our institutions of higher learning be in the VMI or Cleveland State part of the list?
Fortunately, it appears that for the most part, Kentucky schools fund their athletic programs in other ways, with some schools charging small fees and other schools not charging any athletic department fee at all.
| School | Annual athletic fee* |
Total $$ from student athletic fees |
Athletic dept revenues |
% athletic revenues from student fees |
| Murray State University** | $509 | $3,317,323 | $16,827,106 | 20% |
| Western Kentucky University | $436 | $3,839,397 | $30,595,026 | 13% |
| University of Louisville | $50 | $1,975,000 | $134,155,908 | 1% |
| University of Kentucky | $14 | $331,989 | $134,154,614 | 0.2% |
| Eastern Kentucky University | $0 | $0 | $17,328,835 | 0% |
| Morehead State University | $0 | $0 | $11,998,838 | 0% |
| Northern Kentucky University | $0 | $0 | $13,560,994 | 0% |
*The annual athletic fee per student is for intercollegiate athletics only, not intramural or club sports.
**Estimation of individual student cost based on undergraduate enrollment. School either declined to provide fee or did not respond to requests by NBC News.
Sources: Department of Education, NCAA financial report, USA Today
Pushback is happening
The NBC News story begins with a student journalist at James Madison University doing a story on the breakdown of the tuition bill: where the money went within the university. Once she published the story, some students were upset about paying the hidden fees, as were some parents.
The entire report is worth reading. It’s a good example of reporting digging out the facts and making them easy to grasp. Fortunately for most college students in Kentucky, athletic fees are not a significant part of the overall cost of tuition.
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