Wednesday, May 20, 2020

Akron eliminates three athletic programs

Last week the University of Akron eliminated men's cross country, men's golf and women's tennis.  Recently, I have looked at the financial impact of eliminating athletic programs at Old Dominion, Bowling Green and Cincinnati.  Now I turn to Akron.

Note:  I am not including tuition revenue of the student-athletes as revenue to these three programs, as I contend that tuition revenue is revenue generated by the academic units, not the athletic unit.  As you may guess, economists are not unified on this.  Go figure!!

My takeaway:  Eliminating these three programs reduce the athletic department's deficit, but don't get the Zips to the Title IX prong 1 test.  My guess is the university is reducing its direct institutional support for the athletic program and as such these three programs were eliminated.

Before I get to the individual numbers, one thing I want to point out is that for Akron, the majority of Athletic Department Total Operating Revenues comes from Direct Institutional Support.  Here are the numbers for fiscal years (FY) 2016/17, 2017/18 and 2018/19.

Akron FY Direct Institutional Support Total Op. Revenue Percentage

2017 $24,641,163 $31,571,461 78.05%

2018 $24,289,339 $30,412,150 79.87%

2019 $26,011,378 $37,194,485 69.93%

Now turning to the three athletic programs, we notice all three generate very little operating revenues.


Akron FY Total Op. Total Op. Surplus/ Scholarship Surplus/Deficit


Revenue Expenses Deficit Expenses w/o StudentAid







W-Tennis 2017 $21,438 $493,208 -$471,770 $287,894 -$183,876
W-Tennis 2018 $26,989 $490,963 -$463,974 $270,897 -$193,077
W-Tennis 2019 $52,425 $564,439 -$512,014 $287,768 -$224,246







M-Golf 2017 $80,423 $391,789 -$311,366 $139,691 -$171,675
M-Golf 2018 $140,705 $453,628 -$312,923 $136,627 -$176,296
M-Golf 2019 $78,674 $400,061 -$321,387 $143,572 -$177,815







M-CrossCountry 2017 $44,328 $322,908 -$278,579 $116,623 -$161,956
M-CrossCountry 2018 $37,251 $296,164 -$258,912 $112,597 -$146,316
M-CrossCountry 2019 $29,952 $309,625 -$279,673 $111,741 -$167,932

Using the EADA data, I looked up for each fiscal year the following:
Full-time Equivalent Male Counts and Female Counts; and Male student aid and Female Student Aid.

I calculate the following (in terms of percentages):

Name FY Male% Female% Male-Aid% Female-Aid% Difference
Akron 2017 55.08% 44.92% 56.94% 43.06% 1.85%
Akron 2018 54.42% 45.58% 58.47% 41.53% 4.05%
Akron 2019 54.28% 45.72% 58.49% 41.51% 4.20%

Men's athletic student aid was about 58.5% of total athletic student aid for the 2018/19 fiscal year, with men's full time equivalent enrollment about 52.3% of the full time student body enrollment.  Eliminating the scholarship aid for Men's Golf and Men's Cross Country is almost the same as scholarship aid to the Women's Tennis program results in not much gain in the Title IX "prong 1" test for compliance.

Additionally, reducing Men's Cross Country is not eliminating student tuition, since 14 of the 15 Men's cross country participants also participate in Men's Track and Field.