By: Marelyn Chamale-Garcia
DAVIS, CA – UC Davis is having students pay a total of $570 for the 2021-2022 academic year for resources for the UC Davis athletic department which engages only 2% of the student body.
Each quarter, when students pay their tuition bills from the university, the money gets distributed to different departments. For the 2021-2022 school year, all non-athletic students will pay $570 for the athletic department, according to the California Aggie and COSAF Projections and Proposed Fees, which is a spreadsheet that contains information on student tuition. Cumulatively, the intake for the athletic department equals around $19 million and does not include donations from alumni, revenue from outside visitors as well as sponsorships from companies such as Muscle Milk and Pepsi.
UC Davis students are paying some of the highest amounts of funding for athletic departments. At UC Berkeley, students are paying an average of $15 per year for their athletics department. These funds assist the athletic program through the payments of coaches’ salaries, travel game expenses, providing need-based scholarships for recruited student-athletes, and providing free admission to all UC Davis students to all athletic events as reported by the California Aggie.
A large portion of tuition goes towards departments that many students do not use. Such as a section of humanity majors’ tuition goes towards STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) research and resources, the same goes the other way with STEM majors, according to Tuition & Fees | Finance & Business at UC Davis.
UC Davis has responded with a public letter explaining the high costs, saying “athletics brings the campus community together, inspires students to be active, raises school pride, and contributes to high performance both on and off the field.”
Students, as well as parents, have responded with different reactions to the price that UC Davis is charging students for the athletics department. When students were made aware of their tuitions’ distribution, some students have raised questions about the department’s funding such as Paige, a third-year UC Davis student: “I guess it’s just confusing because it’s like yeah there’re schools that have comparable or even bigger sports programs and they are paying so much less than we are. So it just makes me wonder like, what exactly the breakdown of all of our funding goes to.”
Other students do not mind helping out student-athletes. Ally, another third-year student at UC Davis states that “if this is the only way to keep the athletic program growing then I’m totally fine with that. ‘Cause I really enjoy athletic programs, so if there’s no other way to get funding, then it makes sense.”
Parents have also expressed their opinions on this topic. Rob Carrion, a father of a UC Davis student-athlete, doesn’t mind the cost students are paying for the athletic department as he says, “Yeah, charge the money! Damn right, charge the money. Sports need money.”
$570 instead of $15 per quarter, most students don’t go to games and if they do, not $570 worth — so no *not* free. Subsidized at great cost, rather.
And, money is fungible. Unlikely the sports programs would be shut down cuz they are so important to the U — so UCD would have paid directly for what the students got hoodwinked into paying for. This is nothing new – in the early 80’s students were asked to pay for the ARC through student fees and a majority of the tiny fraction who vote did so. But what this report leaves out is how much of the PE department was recently shut down by UCD in a cost-saving move – so students who want to do non-competitive health PE can’t even do that. Go lethargy at UCD!