A.M. Commentary
Salaries Vs. An Arena
Posted: January 30, 2013
HARRISONBURG — The most important statistic for the James Madison men’s basketball program has nothing to do with wins or losses, points or rebounds or even average attendance at the half-empty Convocation Center.
It is this: $17,200 versus $25,250.
That’s the difference between JMU and its peer institutions in pay raises for full professors since 2000, according to a survey by the Chronicle of Higher Education.
How does this impact basketball? About 85 percent of Madison’s $34 million athletics budget is financed by student fees, and when you continue to squeeze money from that source, it makes it difficult to also increase tuition. Without a boost in tuition, there can be no raises for an increasingly agitated JMU faculty; without a rise in student fees, there can be no new basketball arena, the most likely catalyst for a resurgence in hoops.
I’m told that Madison is now likely to delay a decision on building a proposed $87.5 million arena for at least a year. The project is scheduled for consideration by the board of visitors in 2014, and JMU has already won approval from the General Assembly to raise money for the arena.
Now, 2014 looks highly doubtful.
Asked what the faculty’s reaction would be if an arena were funded before pay raises, David McGraw, speaker of JMU’s faculty senate, was blunt.
“I think the faculty,” he said, “would be very angry about that.”
Obviously, the last thing new president Jonathan Alger and vice president of finance Charlie King want are restless professors as JMU competes with sexier — and far higher-paying — schools such as Virginia Commonwealth for brainpower.
The average salary for a full professor at JMU was $87,400 in 2011-12, the last date for which statistics were available. VCU paid $118,600.
Comparing JMU and VCU, though, is a stretch, despite their traditional rivalry in sports. Virginia Commonwealth, thanks to its graduate schools, is higher in the pecking order among universities than Madison. But two southern schools that JMU officially lists as “peer” institutions also pay better, though only marginally. More significantly, both of those schools have far outpaced JMU in faculty raises since 2000. Salaries for full professors at Appalachian State have surged $24,900 to $89,300, while salaries at UNC-Wilmington have gone up $28,300 to $93,600, according to the Chronicle study. Even Bridgewater College salaries have climbed more than JMU’s since 2000 ($18,000).
I’m guessing that’s no news to Madison’s faculty.
With state money scarcer for higher education, JMU hasn’t given across-the-board raises since 2007, although 27 percent of the faculty received adjustments in 2011-12 to boost their salaries above those of newer hires with less experience.
Meanwhile, professors see Madison’s athletics budget creeping into low-level Division I-A territory.
“There is a bit of an academic versus athletics push and pull that goes on at any university,” said McGraw, “and the faculty have argued that over the time period that we have gone without raises, the university has done a number of athletic projects, including the expansion of the stadium and the building of the athletic fields over at University Park.”
That, he said, exacerbates the morale problem.
JMU typically boosts student fees to pay for athletics. The increases are modest, so they spark no uproar among students or their parents, but they do put a cap of sorts on what Madison feels it can charge in tuition. That’s important because student fees cannot be diverted to academics – they may be used only for projects such as health centers, transportation and sports.
“At the end of the day, the students or the students’ parents, they don’t care where the money is going to — tuition or fees — so much,” McGraw said. “They just see the bill.”
The faculty, he said, would prefer to reduce student fees and increase tuition so more money can be funneled into academics.
Makes sense.
But there is a counter-argument: Division I basketball is by far JMU’s best opportunity to promote itself (see: VCU and George Mason) and its only opportunity to make significant money in athletics.
For more than a decade, JMU’s basketball program has been mostly miserable. One reason is the Dukes’ dump of an arena. It’s difficult to lure talented players to Harrisonburg, which lacks an urban culture, or to Madison, which lacks a winning tradition, without some sort of cool enticement. That’s where a new arena comes into the equation.
As James Madison continues to weigh whether to ditch basketball coach Matt Brady at the end of his contract this year — I think the odds are still very much against him, despite the Dukes’ recent success in a weaker-than-usual Colonial Athletic Association — it also needs to ask whether it makes sense to try to hire somebody else before it gets a commitment from the board of visitors to build the new arena.
JMU’s basketball job is lousy, and it’ll continue to be lousy until the Dukes escape the Convo. It would be close to impossible for Madison to find a worse coach than Brady from a PR standpoint, but it might be just as difficult to find one who’s appreciably better at his on-court performance than Brady without a recruiting lure.
I agree with McGraw that the faculty raises should be addressed before a basketball arena. More importantly, the powers-that-be at JMU also seem to agree with him. If Madison had lots of rich alumni, it could hit them up for a John Paul Jones Arena. But it doesn’t, so it has to rely on student fees, and that ATM machine appears to be tapped for the time being.
It is this: $17,200 versus $25,250.
That’s the difference between JMU and its peer institutions in pay raises for full professors since 2000, according to a survey by the Chronicle of Higher Education.
How does this impact basketball? About 85 percent of Madison’s $34 million athletics budget is financed by student fees, and when you continue to squeeze money from that source, it makes it difficult to also increase tuition. Without a boost in tuition, there can be no raises for an increasingly agitated JMU faculty; without a rise in student fees, there can be no new basketball arena, the most likely catalyst for a resurgence in hoops.
I’m told that Madison is now likely to delay a decision on building a proposed $87.5 million arena for at least a year. The project is scheduled for consideration by the board of visitors in 2014, and JMU has already won approval from the General Assembly to raise money for the arena.
Now, 2014 looks highly doubtful.
Asked what the faculty’s reaction would be if an arena were funded before pay raises, David McGraw, speaker of JMU’s faculty senate, was blunt.
“I think the faculty,” he said, “would be very angry about that.”
Obviously, the last thing new president Jonathan Alger and vice president of finance Charlie King want are restless professors as JMU competes with sexier — and far higher-paying — schools such as Virginia Commonwealth for brainpower.
The average salary for a full professor at JMU was $87,400 in 2011-12, the last date for which statistics were available. VCU paid $118,600.
Comparing JMU and VCU, though, is a stretch, despite their traditional rivalry in sports. Virginia Commonwealth, thanks to its graduate schools, is higher in the pecking order among universities than Madison. But two southern schools that JMU officially lists as “peer” institutions also pay better, though only marginally. More significantly, both of those schools have far outpaced JMU in faculty raises since 2000. Salaries for full professors at Appalachian State have surged $24,900 to $89,300, while salaries at UNC-Wilmington have gone up $28,300 to $93,600, according to the Chronicle study. Even Bridgewater College salaries have climbed more than JMU’s since 2000 ($18,000).
I’m guessing that’s no news to Madison’s faculty.
With state money scarcer for higher education, JMU hasn’t given across-the-board raises since 2007, although 27 percent of the faculty received adjustments in 2011-12 to boost their salaries above those of newer hires with less experience.
Meanwhile, professors see Madison’s athletics budget creeping into low-level Division I-A territory.
“There is a bit of an academic versus athletics push and pull that goes on at any university,” said McGraw, “and the faculty have argued that over the time period that we have gone without raises, the university has done a number of athletic projects, including the expansion of the stadium and the building of the athletic fields over at University Park.”
That, he said, exacerbates the morale problem.
JMU typically boosts student fees to pay for athletics. The increases are modest, so they spark no uproar among students or their parents, but they do put a cap of sorts on what Madison feels it can charge in tuition. That’s important because student fees cannot be diverted to academics – they may be used only for projects such as health centers, transportation and sports.
“At the end of the day, the students or the students’ parents, they don’t care where the money is going to — tuition or fees — so much,” McGraw said. “They just see the bill.”
The faculty, he said, would prefer to reduce student fees and increase tuition so more money can be funneled into academics.
Makes sense.
But there is a counter-argument: Division I basketball is by far JMU’s best opportunity to promote itself (see: VCU and George Mason) and its only opportunity to make significant money in athletics.
For more than a decade, JMU’s basketball program has been mostly miserable. One reason is the Dukes’ dump of an arena. It’s difficult to lure talented players to Harrisonburg, which lacks an urban culture, or to Madison, which lacks a winning tradition, without some sort of cool enticement. That’s where a new arena comes into the equation.
As James Madison continues to weigh whether to ditch basketball coach Matt Brady at the end of his contract this year — I think the odds are still very much against him, despite the Dukes’ recent success in a weaker-than-usual Colonial Athletic Association — it also needs to ask whether it makes sense to try to hire somebody else before it gets a commitment from the board of visitors to build the new arena.
JMU’s basketball job is lousy, and it’ll continue to be lousy until the Dukes escape the Convo. It would be close to impossible for Madison to find a worse coach than Brady from a PR standpoint, but it might be just as difficult to find one who’s appreciably better at his on-court performance than Brady without a recruiting lure.
I agree with McGraw that the faculty raises should be addressed before a basketball arena. More importantly, the powers-that-be at JMU also seem to agree with him. If Madison had lots of rich alumni, it could hit them up for a John Paul Jones Arena. But it doesn’t, so it has to rely on student fees, and that ATM machine appears to be tapped for the time being.