Current Events > James Madison's Record $53M in Student Fees Tops All Public Schools

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://sports.yahoo.com/james-madison-record-53m-student-004812524.html

James Madison University has found virtually instant success at the FBS level, both in football and mens basketball. The Dukes have also relied on an unprecedented amount of funding direct from other JMU students. The James Madison athletic department spent $68 million on athletics in fiscal 2023 and reported funding $53.3 million of it via mandatory student fees, charged annually to every JMU student as part of their tuition. Its by far the largest sum of any public school in the country, $23 million more than Old Dominions student fee subsidy. JMUs undergraduate tuition is $30,790 per year for out-of-state students and $13,576 per year for in-state students. The mandatory student fee, which is included in those totals, is $5,662 for 2024. That fee covers a number of thingstransportation services, student health initiatives, facility maintenancebut by far the biggest piece, $2,362 per student per year, is earmarked for funding athletics.

The JMU mens basketball team faces Wisconsin ($0 in student fees) at 9:40 p.m. ET Friday in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. Not only is the $53.3 million tops in 2023, its also the highest total Sportico has seen in six-plus years of sourcing annual revenue/expense reports for every public athletic department in college footballs top division. Its bigger than the total 2023 athletics operating budget for more than 40 FBS schools, and almost equal to James Madisons entire athletics budget the prior year ($57.8 million). Framed another way, the student fee total is nearly 4x the revenue actually generated by the athletic department in fiscal 2023 ($13.4 million) from tickets, media rights, donations and other income. The Dukes played their first season in the Sun Belt conference in 2022, part of a transition from FCS to FBS, and are yet to receive a full share of conference distributions. JMU is required by state law to limit its student fees to a specific percentage of athletics fundingthat limit was 70% in its previous conference, and is now 55% as a member of the Sun Belt. An athletics spokesman said in an email that the school was on a state-approved timeline to meet that requirement, and attributed the growing student fee total to a few specific budget increases.

Wow their student fees is more than my entire tuition at a public state college.

Damn that's wild. JMU is my undergrad alum. I wonder how high the fees were when I graduated.

This is what happens to the smaller schools that aren't on the P4 TV rights gravy train, but still somehow need to get funding so they can halfway compete.

spending 8% of the budget on athletics seems fine to me

https://twitter.com/TJAltimore/status/1747645646163558756/photo/1

Why do I need to pay for athletics when I am going to school for academics?

Quicksilver posted...

Why do I need to pay for athletics when I am going to school for academics?

this guy libertarians. this guy libertarians hard!