Northern Iowa faculty seek end to general fund support for athletics

With University of Northern Iowa strapped for cash and its tuition revenue sliding, unionized faculty members are criticizing the administration for devoting nearly $4.3 million of the campus’ general university funds to athletics in the 2023 budget year — almost $1 million more than planned.

UNI in fiscal 2022 provided $3.5 million to athletics, which was $148,616 more than budgeted — amounting to $7.8 million total over the two years, or $1.06 million more than expected in fiscal 2022 and 2023.

Although the UNI athletics contribution made up just 2 percent of UNI’s total budget in fiscal 2023, it accounted for nearly 28 percent of the athletics budget.

Still, UNI’s United Faculty union is calling for an end to the practice of shifting general university funds to athletics — urging UNI Athletics to become self-supporting like its public counterparts at the University of Iowa and Iowa State University.

“What we'd like to see going forward is that the auxiliary units be self-sustaining,” United Faculty President and UNI digital journalism Professor Christopher Martin told The Gazette. “That they don't dip back into the general university support.”

The reason, he said, is straightforward: “On the academic side, we're really just cut to the bone,” he said. “We have so many faculty lines that we need to have filled and replaced.”

The millions UNI provides annually to Panther Athletics “would really help us a lot,” Martin said about the university’s academic enterprise, which he called “the main mission of the university.”

“Almost every department is just kind of begging for more faculty,” he said, pointing to program closures — like the Textiles and Apparel major no longer accepting new students — as fallout of the faculty shortfall. “We're really just trying to do our best to keep up the academic excellence with fewer and fewer faculty.”

‘Difficult decisions’

Unlike UNI Athletics, which needs an annual boost from the general fund to make ends meet, UI and ISU athletics are self-sustaining — although UI Athletics during the height of COVID borrowed $50 million from the main campus, of which it has paid back less than 10 percent.

Iowa State University also offered a loan to its athletics department in July 2020 — if necessary.

"Athletics was able to use cash reserves to meet operating obligations and fund its debt service, so the loan was not needed,“ ISU spokeswoman Angie Hunt told The Gazette in 2022.

And UNI during its COVID crunch upped the athletics contribution to $8 million in fiscal 2021, which was $4.8 million more than budgeted that year.

Although UNI administrators agree that academics, student success and faculty support are central to the campus’ mission, spokesman Pete Moris said athletics play an important role, too.

“Supporting successful NCAA Division I athletic programs at UNI is integral in helping drive applications, admissions and financial giving to the institution,” Moris said. “The success of our student-athletes in the classroom and in competition elevates the national profile of our entire institution, helping energize our campus and our alumni base and our greater Cedar Valley community.”

He acknowledged UNI, “like many of our peer institutions,” has faced “difficult decisions across our entire campus over the last several years.” Among the moves it’s making in response is a $250 million “Our Tomorrow” fundraising campaign that to date has raised more than $243 million, including more than $169 million for scholarships, faculty support, engaged learning and academic programs, Moris said.

That fundraising campaign also includes support for athletics facilities — like a new dome for the UNI Dome and a new wrestling facility. United Faculty argue the general fund distributions to athletics — which have been routine for decades — need to stop.

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Reporting UNI Athletics has among the lowest budgets among its conference peers, Moris said the administration hears its faculty members and “continues to carefully weigh difficult decisions with the best interest of the entire university in mind as we continue in dialogue with the UNI community on this topic.”

“One of the ongoing directives for our athletics department is to generate more revenue and to identify additional opportunities for our athletics department to be more self-sustaining,” Moris said.

‘10 tenure-track faculty lines’

Martin said UNI administrators also need to do better about taking a shared governance approach in deciding to cover athletics shortfalls.

“With a million dollars, we're talking at least 10 tenure-track faculty lines with salary and benefits,” Martin said. “I mean, that's pretty substantial.”

He said the faculty union didn’t know about the increase in athletics support until seeing it last month in the Board of Regents’ comprehensive fiscal report. “It’s a gut punch to our high goals and expectations for UNI academics,” Martin said.

UNI, like the UI and ISU, has seen its count of tenured and tenure-track faculty plummet over the last decade — with total faculty falling at UNI from 788 in the 2012-2013 academic year to 606 in 2022-23. UNI a decade ago had 453 tenured faculty and 112 tenure-track faculty, where last year it had 330 and 66, respectively, according to Board of Regents documents.

Pre-pandemic in the 2018 budget year, UNI spent $137 million on employee salaries. In fiscal 2023, UNI spent $123 million — a $14 million drop, or 10 percent decline. UNI had expected to spend $130 million last year on salaries but came in $7 million under budget “from attrition in all employee classifications and vacant positions.”

Meanwhile, United Faculty noted in its criticism that UNI Athletics last year spent more than it budgeted in several sports and brought in less than expected from football, marketing and miscellaneous moneymakers.

“This came at time when funding for faculty salaries and faculty lines continued to be reduced — by more than $2.087 million in FY 2023 from the previous year, making it the single largest line for defunding,” according to the faculty critique.

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com