There's two definitions that are key to that report that must be understood before drawing conclusions.
1) "Grant-in-aid" are a large portion of expenses and are scholarships. This is the athletic department paying the market tuition bill for an athlete. This qualifies as an expense, but clearly has direct benefits to academics. For the university and academics, it's a "good expense."
2) "Direct Institutional Support" is the category that you're after. This is money directly paid by the academic side to the school. However, it's rarely a direct money transfer. Most of them are discounts on tuition.
I'd argue these waivers, especially a Title IX waiver, is ultimately a very good expense for the academic side and society as a whole.
Another large revenue is Government support - support from the state government. While this is a direct money injection, you can't claim that the money would have otherwise gone to academics. You can argue that it should but that's different. Further, it's cyclical.
Of course, I'm not going to pretend there aren't other forms of support from the university and student fees. However, those are small compared to the budgets as a whole. Yes, the university often does chip in for stadiums, but the university will get rights to use the stadium like for commencement ceremonies. Money spent by universities usually (should) get something in return besides an investment in branding.
Finally, like it or not, athletics play a huge role in brand awareness and prestige for the school. If you look at the tiers of schools, that is, Ivy's, Tier 2's, etc., there's little movement inbetween tiers, but there is a lot of jockeying within the tier. Athletics is the most visible way of doing so. When Doug Flutie threw a Hail Mary for Boston College, the following year, they tripled the number of applications they received.
The report is from the NCAA and painted in the best way it possibly could be. And it still shows 20% of athletics income is from direct institutional support. That’s not tuition waivers showing up as revenue on the balance sheet.
Athletics is a money losing endeavor for virtually every college in the nation.
Whether money losing athletics is a net benefit for colleges is an attempt at reframing the argument. There are lots of ways to spend money that may be net positive but that isn’t what is being discussed.
At least 99% of colleges could unequivocally save money by getting rid of their athletic departments.
You're deliberately choosing to ignore what is "direct institutional support" and using your own belief as to what it is. Tuition waivers most certainly are a component of that, and very often, a very large component.
I am not ignoring it. I'm stating exactly what the NCAA says that it is. You are trying to adjust the definition to fit your argument with an unsourced article from Forbes and assuming that the NCAA is using a methodology that it clearly states it is not.
1) "Grant-in-aid" are a large portion of expenses and are scholarships. This is the athletic department paying the market tuition bill for an athlete. This qualifies as an expense, but clearly has direct benefits to academics. For the university and academics, it's a "good expense."
2) "Direct Institutional Support" is the category that you're after. This is money directly paid by the academic side to the school. However, it's rarely a direct money transfer. Most of them are discounts on tuition.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kristidosh/2017/06/12/the-bigge...
I'd argue these waivers, especially a Title IX waiver, is ultimately a very good expense for the academic side and society as a whole.
Another large revenue is Government support - support from the state government. While this is a direct money injection, you can't claim that the money would have otherwise gone to academics. You can argue that it should but that's different. Further, it's cyclical.
Of course, I'm not going to pretend there aren't other forms of support from the university and student fees. However, those are small compared to the budgets as a whole. Yes, the university often does chip in for stadiums, but the university will get rights to use the stadium like for commencement ceremonies. Money spent by universities usually (should) get something in return besides an investment in branding.
Finally, like it or not, athletics play a huge role in brand awareness and prestige for the school. If you look at the tiers of schools, that is, Ivy's, Tier 2's, etc., there's little movement inbetween tiers, but there is a lot of jockeying within the tier. Athletics is the most visible way of doing so. When Doug Flutie threw a Hail Mary for Boston College, the following year, they tripled the number of applications they received.