David Minton speaks on higher education sports funding.....
I recently travelled to IHRSA via JFK following an invitation to speak at the State University of New York (SUNY) Cortland. With 64 statewide campuses and a total enrollment of more than 413,000 students, SUNY is America’s largest system of public higher education. Cortland has an established leisure and sports studies programme with some impressive sports facilities. I was speaking in the 281,601 sq ft Bessie L. Park Indoor Sports Centre, which is next to the Harriet Holsten six-lane, 50m swimming pool which also contains a 15 foot diving area with an underwater viewing deck. A six lane indoor running track is located in the Lusk Field House and the Alumni Arena contains an impressive 15,725 sq ft ice rink. The outdoor sports facilities continue to spread out over the 119 acre campus. Intercollegiate sports in the US are big, big business and so sports facilities like these are the norm.
Just a few miles away at Ithaca, the Ivy League Cornell University has an even bigger campus, 745 acres, all the sports facilities you could imagine including a stadium that most UK football teams would die for, a 16 lane ten-pin at the Helen Newman Bowling Centre and polo ponies at the Oxley Equestrian Centre.
I got the tour round the Noyes Community and Recreation Centre built from an endowment from the late Jansen ‘Jan’ Noyes Jr., who was third in a living line of five generations of Cornellians. The centre includes a new impressive fitness centre, the sixth on the campus. It also has three lounges, a 30 foot climbing wall and a convenience store.
Endowments in the US, I discovered, are not all spent by academics. Sports are high on the priority list and endowments ensure that Universities have a range of facilities many UK educational establishments can only dream of. Not surprisingly the difference between the UK and US endowments could not be more stark. Only Oxford and Cambridge can be compared with the best endowed US universities. In 2006, Cambridge is listed number eight world wide with endowments of $5.87 billion and Oxford is listed at number 14 with $5.11 billion. These compare to the top five of Harvard $28.9bn, Yale $18bn, Stanford $14bn, University of Texas $13bn, and Princeton $13bn. Edinburgh’s endowment of £180m, third on the UK list would place it 146th in the US rankings. Harvard is the most amazing money making machine with endowments larger than all the UK universities combined.
The Ross Group’s recent survey provides UK data on the percentage of former university students donating. Only nine institutions reported giving rates of three percent or more and the sector average is just one percent. Compare this to the US average of thirty percent while the Ivy League Princeton achieved 61 percent last year.
In the report on University Fundraising the Sutton Trust believe changing tax laws relating to donations would help encourage more giving but the UK Government has so far proved reluctant to introduce such reforms. In the US, donations qualify as a straight deduction from gross income. This enables donors, particularly high earning alumni, to claim all the tax relief themselves, proving quite an incentive.
Perhaps changes in the tax laws would promote more Alumni support which may give student communities more incentive for an active lifestyle. Although this is a fast growing sector of the UK fitness market, it is clear that we have a long way to go before our higher education sports facilities are in the same league as the US.
David Minton regularly writes for Leisure Report Magazine, for recent articles read more...
