When purchasing almost anything, the price often includes taxes or fees which increase the initial cost. Cars, concert tickets and credit cards all come with fees. So does your college tuition.
This past summer, the University of Minnesota announced that it would add a $200 annual athletics fee to its tuition to pay student-athletes. Additionally, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken approved a motion for NCAA athletes to be paid directly by their university. With this being passed, schools can now pay athletes up to $20.5 million, distributed among all teams.
But this isn’t a new thing. Universities have been adding fees to students’ tuition, which directly go towards the school’s athletics, for years. NBC News reported in 2020 that a student at James Madison University found that over $2,000 of her tuition was going directly to her school’s athletics.
This raises the question of ‘how much of my tuition is going towards St. Thomas athletics?’ As of this fall, the athletic fee added onto students’ tuition is $174, which has gone up by $20 since the fall of 2022. With St. Thomas having around 6,000 undergraduate students, this would be over $1 million per semester going to the athletic department.
Students attend universities to eventually get a job and start their own career, and they should not be unwillingly paying a department when they don’t reap the benefits of the price.
One athletic facility that all students have access to is the Anderson Athletic & Recreation Complex. The quality of the gym equipment at the AARC has not been maintained since I arrived at St. Thomas three years ago, so this money is not being distributed evenly to benefit all students on campus.
Gym equipment is often broken and not fixed in a timely manner. The treadmills, which are usually the most used machines, have been seen with ‘out of order’ signs over the screen for weeks. With an already small gym which is shared by every team, it is not realistic for students to even use the gym on campus. At the end of the day, it would be more worthwhile for students to attend a gym or workout studio off campus.
School spirit is a big reason why students attend a specific school, but is some of this tuition money going toward the students’ experiences? The University of South Carolina is using similar fees “to continue student access to athletics events/ticket lottery, address increased event/program operating costs, and enhance the student experience across multiple USC sporting venues.”
The Tommies jumped from Division III to Division I in 2020, with their official acceptance into the division in July of this year. However, I haven’t seen a significant change in the spirit and culture surrounding athletic events. The NCAA reported that St. Thomas had an average of around 5,500 fans in St. Paul for the 2019 football season. On average, attendance has gone down by about 2,000 people since the change in divisions. The student section rooting for the Tommies is never full through the game’s end because the team spirit has declined since the rise in divisions.
With the Lee and Penny Anderson Arena opening this fall, the athletic department has a lot to live up to. With the conflict regarding a neighborhood group surrounding the campus and a sustainability issue during the construction’s beginning stages, the spirit of the Tommies better live up to the work the university has put into this facility.
As students have seen in the past few years, it’s very possible that the athletic fees will continue to rise, but with lots of buildup for the sporting culture, hopefully students will feel satisfied with the price they’re paying.
Abby Madsen can be reached at mads3817@stthomas.edu.
