RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on May 26, 2020 12:10:47 GMT -5
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Post by LizziebethHoya on May 26, 2020 13:08:07 GMT -5
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on May 26, 2020 13:10:03 GMT -5
Well, bringing that many to the Main Campus that would be awkward (and would sound a DEFCON warning at the next ANC meeting). But Georgetown has a lot of good people working on this issue with a grasp of the public health dynamics that few universities can touch. There is time to make the right decision, not the first decision.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on May 26, 2020 22:22:31 GMT -5
Well, bringing that many to the Main Campus that would be awkward (and would sound a DEFCON warning at the next ANC meeting). But Georgetown has a lot of good people working on this issue with a grasp of the public health dynamics that few universities can touch. There is time to make the right decision, not the first decision. Hah, yeah, it never ceases to amaze me how no press outlet seems capable of reporting a commonly accepted number of students for the University. I'm guessing the same is true of other schools, and I just don't notice. Anyway, to your substantive point about Georgetown having lots of people with exceptional public health qualifications working on the issue... I agree, to a point. That point is where institutional priorities and leadership take over, for good or ill. The case in point here is Johns Hopkins, which is the subject of a scathing piece in The Chronicle of Higher Education called " University Leaders Are Failing." It's behind the paywall, but you can both get the gist of it from social media and also probably just guess: a University leadership full of corporate exec types has made a bevy of decisions that prioritize revenue at the expense of other needs... including maintaining adequate stocks of PPE and other public health preparedness measures of the sort recommended by their own unrivaled in-house experts who are dispensing wisdom to every other institutional leader around the country. I always take such accounts with a grain of salt - university leaders are running an extremely complex enterprise, not a charity, and they find themselves eternally trying to navigate a stormy ocean of conflicting stakeholder demands. But one also quickly learns that different schools operate in very different ways and according to vastly diverging credos... and Michael Bloomberg's alma mater has over the last decade in particular gained a reputation for profit maximization - not least the profit of its executive leadership and their peers in various on-campus sinecures. I have much greater faith in Jack DeGioia's leadership than I do in that of many other institutions. I, for one, am glad Georgetown is taking a more deliberate approach, particularly when so much can change over the span of a few weeks. I suspect that this period between Memorial Day and the Fourth of July, when the impacts of the (first) big attempt at nationwide reopening become apparent, will prove highly instructive.
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on May 27, 2020 12:37:55 GMT -5
Anyway, to your substantive point about Georgetown having lots of people with exceptional public health qualifications working on the issue... I agree, to a point. That point is where institutional priorities and leadership take over, for good or ill...I have much greater faith in Jack DeGioia's leadership than I do in that of many other institutions. I, for one, am glad Georgetown is taking a more deliberate approach, particularly when so much can change over the span of a few weeks. I suspect that this period between Memorial Day and the Fourth of July, when the impacts of the (first) big attempt at nationwide reopening become apparent, will prove highly instructive. Due to a mix of board buy-in, centralized leadership, and sheer longevity, Jack DeGioia has a degree of resilience against the relentless pressure to drive policy in the framework of revenue. The pressure forces most to think revenue first, an approach employed by so many college CEO's, which is really what they are today. Let's be clear: colleges are opening because they cannot afford not to. Mitch Daniels' argument this week that Purdue has a "duty" to reopen is anything but. Purdue's low-margin approach is less about a university which support a financial model than a financial organization that supports a physical university and an expansive online offering. And while there is much in Daniels' small-c conservative funding model that works for middle class families (tuition is capped below $10,000), they cannot sustain the West Lafayette campus if people aren't enrolled with room and board. The "duty" is to stay in business, not to support the aegis of higher learning. Georgetown has some, but not a lot of wiggle room. A drop in enrollment will drive cuts in programs and faculty--even an increase in gap year requests is a loss of revenue. (I had never heard of a gap year when I was a student.) The impacts on fundraising are still not defined, and one need not look any further than men's basketball to understand that there are a lot of open and serious questions which need to be addressed. Men's basketball is the only program at Georgetown which is self-sustaining, as well as reliant on ticket revenue to support its operations. In very general terms, the Fox contract only covers a third of the budget. At this point, there is no NCAA money coming in from the last five years of tournament performance, although there may be some conference distributions. Season ticket and donor revenue, while declining in recent years, still provides a significant chunk of revenue. How many people will commit to sending in Hoop Club gifts this summer to get the seats to watch the team in person? Georgetown has let the Hoop Club membership age over the years and a considerable number of the season ticket base is 60+. Are they coming back this year? What happens if they don't? There seem to be years where Georgetown assumed losses in the basketball program as the cost of doing business. They will not have that flexibility this year. The President's office can't eat a major loss in basketball revenues, so when do they tell Ewing he's got to lay off assistant coaches and staff now to meet a revised FY21 budget? Do they stop offering guarantee fees for non-conference opponents and if so, who's left to play? If basketball has to cut 20% of its budget by September, from what, and from whom? Some schools will use a scalpel and some will use the cleaver. UConn is moving toward eliminating one third of its entire athletic programs before it joins the Big East to cut costs. The University of Akron will consolidate its 11 colleges to five to make ends meet. Multiply all this across 1000 different universities and that's what keeping a lot of college presidents busy this summer.
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hoya9797
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Post by hoya9797 on May 27, 2020 16:49:28 GMT -5
Men's basketball is the only program at Georgetown which is self-sustaining, as well as reliant on ticket revenue to support its operations. In very general terms, the Fox contract only covers a third of the budget. At this point, there is no NCAA money coming in from the last five years of tournament performance, although there may be some conference distributions. Season ticket and donor revenue, while declining in recent years, still provides a significant chunk of revenue. How many people will commit to sending in Hoop Club gifts this summer to get the seats to watch the team in person? Georgetown has let the Hoop Club membership age over the years and a considerable number of the season ticket base is 60+. Are they coming back this year? What happens if they don't? The only sports program? Or only program of any kind?
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on May 29, 2020 8:57:01 GMT -5
Men's basketball is the only program at Georgetown which is self-sustaining, as well as reliant on ticket revenue to support its operations. In very general terms, the Fox contract only covers a third of the budget. At this point, there is no NCAA money coming in from the last five years of tournament performance, although there may be some conference distributions. Season ticket and donor revenue, while declining in recent years, still provides a significant chunk of revenue. How many people will commit to sending in Hoop Club gifts this summer to get the seats to watch the team in person? Georgetown has let the Hoop Club membership age over the years and a considerable number of the season ticket base is 60+. Are they coming back this year? What happens if they don't? The only sports program? Or only program of any kind? Sports program. The History department isn't exactly known for bringing in ticket revenue
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TC
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Post by TC on May 29, 2020 10:56:56 GMT -5
The only sports program? Or only program of any kind? Sports program. The History department isn't exactly known for bringing in ticket revenue Is the basketball program known for that? I thought the basketball program was running losses - when did it become sustaining?
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on May 29, 2020 17:10:08 GMT -5
Sports program. The History department isn't exactly known for bringing in ticket revenue Is the basketball program known for that? I thought the basketball program was running losses - when did it become sustaining? There are people far more qualified than I on this site to demystify the arcane vagaries of college athletics revenues, including the particularly opaque arrangement at Georgetown (hence the missing data below), but here's a couple data point for you: www.businessinsider.com/louisville-was-college-basketballs-biggest-money-maker-in-2016-2018-2
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on May 29, 2020 18:30:19 GMT -5
There are so many things wrong with the article cited above, but let me start at the source.
Business Insider. A sports publication? No, it's a German based news web site that is a content aggregator. Bloomberg.com called Business insider "a traffic reseller, producing lots of stories with catchy headlines and selling advertisers on the eyeballs they collect." Does it regularly cover sports? No.
Next, the author, Brandon Wiggins. His bio at business insider, and I'm not kidding, calls him "a former sports editorial intern." He was there seven months. Paid internships are always good, I suppose, and getting an article published is a nice add to a resume. He's a freelancer now writing about India and Pakistan.
His methodology--nonexistent. He cited a USA Today study on athletic department budgets, except the list was for public schools only. He also cited the Department of Education, whose Equity In Atheletics data set is one of the few places that department data is freely available. But Wiggins simply took a column, total revenues, minus operating expenses, and called it "profit". Even I know that's not how you calculate costs at a university.
In EADA terms, and as defined on its site, revenues is: "all revenues attributable to intercollegiate athletic activities. This includes revenues from appearance guarantees and options, contributions from alumni and others, institutional royalties, signage and other sponsorships, sport camps, state or other government support, student activity fees, ticket and luxury box sales, and any other revenues attributable to intercollegiate athletic activities." Expenses are defined as "All expenses attributable to intercollegiate athletic activities. This includes appearance guarantees and options, athletically related student aid, contract services, equipment, fundraising activities, operating expenses, promotional activities, recruiting expenses, salaries and benefits, supplies, travel, and any other expenses attributable to intercollegiate athletic activities." But Wiggins didn't use expenses but operating expenses, defined as "All expenses an institution incurs attributable to home, away, and neutral-site intercollegiate athletic contests (commonly known as game-day expenses), for (A) Lodging, meals, transportation, uniforms, and equipment for coaches, team members, support staff (including, but not limited to team managers and trainers), and others; and (B) Officials."
Big difference. The operating expenses were $2,559,739, but total expenses were $17.7 million.
Two questions:
1. What's in operating expenses? It's a little opaque, but consider all the setup for home games at Capital One Arena, arena fees, travel, and general upkeep around the game itself, but that's a fraction of the cost of the program. It's not clear (and will never be clear, BTW) what portion of that amount is rent to Capital One Arena, but it's significant. If the average ticket price is $20, simple math tells you what it takes per game to break even on "operating expenses". But that's not the whole story, of course.
2. What's in expenses? Lots. A head coach's salary isn't in operating expenses (the high watermark of JT III's salary was in this timeframe), nor his assistants, the office staff, the training staff, sports information, the walk-up airline tickets and hotel stays for recruiting visits...or even scholarships, for that matter. There is also some amount of apportioned expenses for the Thompson Center, which was online by that time. A lot of money? Sure.
But here's the point. Without NCAA tournament participation, the chief sources of revenue in 2015-16 were the TV contract ($4.2 million), Hoop Club donations, and ticket sales. A total of 144,143 attended 17 home games. Even at an average of $20 a ticket (perhaps a stretch with all the discounted ticketing going on in late-era JT III), that's no more than $2.8 million. That's not to extrapolate a huge loss because university accounting never works that way, only to show that operating expenses is only a slice of the pie. But if you're drawing 8,479 a game and have Georgetown's level of baked-in staff and facility costs, you're under water.
During that same period, Marquette paid just $29,000 per game to rent the Bradley Center, less the money they got from suite rental, or a net of about $10K per home game. (Georgetown does not get suite rental revenue.) Perhaps more important: they averaged almost 7,000 more fans through the turnstiles per game than Georgetown did. And it goes without saying that Duke or North Carolina pays $0 in rent because it's their own building.
Moral of the story: Unless you're going deep in the NCAA tournament, 8,479 a game isn't a recipe for profit, however an intern defines it.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on May 29, 2020 20:00:33 GMT -5
Yeah, just to be clear, by "here's a couple of data points" I meant the topline aggregate figures as DFW HOYA laid them out, not whatever foolishness the article tried to derive. No one on the planet thinks Georgetown is/was the 14th 'richest' or most profitable program out there.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Jun 9, 2020 22:47:49 GMT -5
The University sent out a statement. It was not particularly well-received, as it employed a great many words to say very little that was new:
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Jun 15, 2020 15:20:07 GMT -5
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Jun 15, 2020 15:26:39 GMT -5
Georgetown has canceled all study abroad and exchange programs for the Fall 2020 semester, according to an email sent on June 15 by Provost Robert Groves. In a separate email, Georgetown’s graduate school announced all graduate students would be invited to attend classes in person. That throws a wrench into Residence Life, which runs at capacity based on a certain percentage of students being abroad. And those students didn't sign up for housing for 2020-21.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Jun 15, 2020 15:28:25 GMT -5
Georgetown has canceled all study abroad and exchange programs for the Fall 2020 semester, according to an email sent on June 15 by Provost Robert Groves. In a separate email, Georgetown’s graduate school announced all graduate students would be invited to attend classes in person. That throws a wrench into Residence Life, which runs at capacity based on a certain percentage of students being abroad. And those students didn't sign up for housing for 2020-21. Nothing like having a literal hotel room as your dorm...
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Post by reformation on Jun 15, 2020 16:18:08 GMT -5
Would have to think at its current state the men's Bball program is no better than break even and probably a money loser. Not sure if numbers above include things like allocated expense of scholarships for example which would be a decent chunk of the #'s above. My sense is that a lot of admin overhead is allocated on a per student basis to the athletic teams which is in effect a big (accounting at least) subsidy to men's bball from other sports.
On a slightly off topic note related to the fall 2020 housing situation I was wondering what is the consensus regarding the new dorm opposite Reiss. Obviously the general view regarding most Gtwn housing is not good, I was curious to see from those in the know if the new facilities represent a big improvement or not versus existing facilities.
Hopefully the potential housing crisis caused by covid for the fall will generate some innovative thinking re how to address Gtwn's housing issues.
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Bigs"R"Us
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Post by Bigs"R"Us on Jun 15, 2020 19:32:01 GMT -5
Can they just demolish Harbin already. Such an eyesore.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Jun 16, 2020 19:05:01 GMT -5
Can they just demolish Harbin already. Such an eyesore. Highly unlikely for a number of reasons, not least of which is the carbon footprint associated with demolition and reconstruction, as opposed to renovation. There are ways to make buildings less ugly, but usually there has to be a compelling functional reason that pairs with the aesthetic. Anyway, Covid updates: 4 undergrad scenarios under consideration
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Jun 16, 2020 19:42:26 GMT -5
Option #2 seems the most likely and the one where the costs wouldn't absolutely skyrocket. It's also a proof of concept for reducing the number of undergraduates living on campus long term. Doesn't address the one-offs (off campus living) or the wild cards (hundreds simply decide to take the year off w/o a tuition check and GU goes into panic mode) but it's the most prudent.
To that end, and not encouraging it, but...what's the downside in taking a so-called gap year? Nobody even thought of this in the 1980's. If you weren't in college, you had to get a job.
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Jun 17, 2020 18:10:27 GMT -5
Option #2 seems the most likely and the one where the costs wouldn't absolutely skyrocket. It's also a proof of concept for reducing the number of undergraduates living on campus long term. Doesn't address the one-offs (off campus living) or the wild cards (hundreds simply decide to take the year off w/o a tuition check and GU goes into panic mode) but it's the most prudent. To that end, and not encouraging it, but...what's the downside in taking a so-called gap year? Nobody even thought of this in the 1980's. If you weren't in college, you had to get a job. People did take gap years in the 80s (and earlier). They were just jokingly referred to as "finishing school" and entailed taking a post-grad year at Choate, Emma Willard, or Avon Old Farms. PG Year - for the 18 year old in your life who you're afraid is too immature to be on their own and would get themselves killed or expelled by Thanksgiving. Not exactly commonplace among most demographics, but certainly more commonly represented among the social stratum to which Georgetown students tended to belong by that point. The same is true of gap years - it's not everyone who can afford a year's worth of unemployment as an adult, and certainly not under a Covid economy. As for panic setting in if hundreds of undergrads take a year off... keep in mind that undergrads are by far the most expensive cohort to service and also the one that is most heavily subsidized with school-provided financial aid. If all or most of those hypothetical students taking a year off was going to be paying full freight, that would be one thing. But it's just as likely that those most likely to step away would be those facing the steepest economic hurdles, while those for who money has rarely been an obstacle can just as soon rent a studio in Rosslyn and continue enjoying outdoor parties on rooftops and in Burleith alleys (given that outdoor transmission appears quite limited).
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