UNT has gradually increased student fees and institutional support

[GMGEagle]

UNT gradually increased student athletic fee and institutional support despite below-average athletic performance

Reece Waddell | Senior Staff Writer

@ReeceWaddell15

Student athletic fees at UNT have more than doubled in the last seven years, according to the NCAA Membership Financial Reporting System. In 2015, student fees and institutional support combined to equal $20,043,786.

If this amount was subtracted from the athletic department’s expenses, UNT would have been just over $20 million in debt last year.

Since 2008, the North Texas football team has had one winning season and has been under the direction of three different head coaches. Men’s basketball has failed to finish above .500 since hiring head coach Tony Benford in 2012 and had the third-lowest average home attendance in Conference USA in 2015.

As a result of the subpar performances in the higher revenue sports, UNT has steadily raised student fees and institutional support to fund athletics.

“I don’t look at [student fees] as a loss,” athletic director Rick Villarreal said. “I look at that as an investment in the university. I don’t try to justify anything. For me, it’s a program the university feels is valuable, so that’s why it has an athletics department. It’s why they have an athletic director.”

The NCAA report showed UNT collected $4,641,911 in student fees in 2008 compared to $10,723,272 in 2015. In 2008, UNT received $14,081 in institutional support. That figure grew nearly 662 percent in 2015 to total $9,319,514.

When tallied together, UNT’s student athletic fees and institutional support make up roughly two thirds of the athletic department’s revenue. 

At a Board of Regents meeting in September 2015, Villarreal asked for permission to increase the student athletic fee by $1 per semester credit hour – a motion that was approved. Villarreal said despite the recent rise, North Texas still has the lowest fees both in C-USA and across the state.

“There’s a certain group that wants to take North Texas and make us somebody else,” Villarreal said. “Our own people want to make us different than everybody else. I’ve never really in my entire career been around this kind of situation where we always want to look at the negative. If the university decided tomorrow that it didn’t want an athletic program, then that would be their decision.”

This issue is not only plaguing UNT, though.

In a report by the Texas Tribune, it was documented that all but two public universities in Texas lost money on their athletic programs in 2015. According to the report, the only two public schools to make a profit were Texas A&M University and the University of Texas at Austin. 

However, this was not exactly the case. Texas Tribune staff writer and lead reporter on the aforementioned report Matthew Watkins said his publication chose to intentionally subtract student fees and institutional support from each school’s bottom line in order to paint a clearer picture of the money universities generated from things like ticket and merchandise sales.

Erica Wieting | Staff Graphic Artist

“It would be inaccurate to say the athletic department is in debt or failing to cover their expenses, because they do have that money,” Watkins said. “It’s just we felt that money […] there’s a difference between what we would call earned revenue and what we could call a subsidy, which is being used to basically keep the athletic department financially solvent.”

In actuality, UNT made a $43,557 profit in 2015 when student fees and institutional support were accounted for. Watkins did not feel he skewed or misrepresented the data, though.

Instead, he said that by introducing the figures without student fees and institutional support, he provided transparency as to what was going on within athletic programs in Texas.

“I would be surprised if schools stopped doing this,” Watkins said. “People care so much in Texas about [athletics] that it’s hard to imagine this ending anytime soon.”

After learning of the increases to finance the athletic department, some UNT students and alumni are questioning whether the hike in student fees is justifiable.

Vlad Otvos graduated from UNT last December and was an avid supporter of North Texas athletics. He said he has attended between three and five football games per year, as well as various swimming and diving events. Additionally, he said the rate at which UNT funds athletics compared to other things on campus seems unbalanced.

“You have a school of 40,000, and maybe 500 are on a sports team. That’s not a high percentage,” Otvos said. “We’re pouring all this money into 500 students. What about all these graduate students who are TAs in biology labs who aren’t getting paid enough because our money goes to sports?”

Other students did not take as much of an issue with the increase in fees.

Finance senior Robert Watson said he did not think UNT receiving roughly $20 million from the university in student fees and institutional support was too much money. Rather, he saw it as a necessary investment in the athletic department.

“You want to be able to take pride in saying ‘I went there,’” Watson said. “We may see it now that they drove the student fees pretty high in the past five, six, seven years, but five years from now we may look back and say ‘UNT is now a University of Houston, or whatever.’ And it started because we decided we cared about being good at sports.”

For Villarreal, the goal remains to improve UNT’s infrastructure and put winning teams on the court and field. But unlike others, he does not necessarily see winning as an immediate fix to the revenue problem.

“When we were winning 20 games a year six years in a row in basketball, our season ticket numbers didn’t triple or quadruple or whatever,” Villarreal said. “A lot of places it would. Why does it not here? I’m not sure. It’s not because we’re not out there pursuing it or trying to make it happen.”

Here's a link to the full write up: http://ntdaily.com/unt-increasing-student-athletic-fee-and-institutional-support-despite-below-average-athletic-performance/

[GMG24]

“When we were winning 20 games a year six years in a row in basketball, our season ticket numbers didn’t triple or quadruple or whatever,” Villarreal said. “A lot of places it would. Why does it not here? I’m not sure. It’s not because we’re not out there pursuing it or trying to make it happen.”

 

Yes but they sure declined when the losing started happening.  We went from what 4,000 consistently to 1,200 (maybe) this year. 

[untjim1995]

This article could have been written by combining several posts on this website.

These students aren't going to keep paying this fee without getting anything back for it. When that vote gets places to rescind that fee, the excuses that RV is throwing out in this article should more than clearly tell you why it gets reversed.

He is a terrible, terrible AD. He doesn't understand that attendance in hoops went from about 1200 to near 4000 every game in a decade, which is triple what it was and is today. And a real AD and staff could have really sold JJ's teams much harder to the community than they ever did.

But he's got the UNT 17, so...

 

[Wag Tag]

5 minutes ago, untjim1995 said:

This article could have been written by combining several posts on this website.

These students aren't going to keep paying this fee without getting anything back for it. When that vote gets places to rescind that fee, the excuses that RV is throwing out in this article should more than clearly tell you why it gets reversed.

He is a terrible, terrible AD. He doesn't understand that attendance in hoops went from about 1200 to near 4000 every game in a decade, which is triple what it was and is today. And a real AD and staff could have really sold JJ's teams much harder to the community than they ever did.

But he's got the UNT 17, so...

 

How do they rescind the fee?

[meangreenbob]

RV........................................you sir, are the problem!! You know it, we know it, everyone knows it.

[All About UNT]

So glad to see that the idiotic statement of “When we were winning 20 games a year six years in a row in basketball, our season ticket numbers didn’t triple or quadruple or whatever,” Villarreal said. “A lot of places it would. Why does it not here? I’m not sure. It’s not because we’re not out there pursuing it or trying to make it happen.” 

I would have immediately responded with well "what is attendance at now compared to that era?".  I know that many feel the board is such a negative place now but how can you feel confident in our future when a man makes excuses such as these for our attendance and losses?

Having 4k a game while in the Sunbelt playing teams most kids hadn't heard of before they started following Mean Green Basketball is pretty dang good.  See what happened when you brought OSU and Tech into our house?  Filled the stadium up pretty nicely.  

Also if you feel like you are in a hostile work environment and in place with this attitude "I’ve never really in my entire career been around this kind of situation where we always want to look at the negative" then save your sanity and step down/retire.

The negative feelings is a direct result of one winning football season in a modern eternity.  You can't sugar coat that. Win and everyone (including 90) will shut up and cheer.  Don't win and you can expect status quo and people calling for you to leave.  Simple equation actually.

 

[GRN-WHT]

The man is delusional.

Not only does he need to be relieved of his duties, he needs to be sent in for mental evaluation. 

[untjim1995]

2 hours ago, Wag Tag said:

How do they rescind the fee?

By a student body vote...

[UNTFan23]

32 minutes ago, untjim1995 said:

By a student body vote...

How do you (and the student body in general) propose the school pay for the debt used to fund the 78 million dollar stadium?  The university would need to cough up the money from somewhere to pay the bonds. You'd likely see a situation where the university robs Peter in order to pay Paul.

Edited April 14, 2016 by UNTFan23

[UNT90]

2 hours ago, untjim1995 said:

This article could have been written by combining several posts on this website.

These students aren't going to keep paying this fee without getting anything back for it. When that vote gets places to rescind that fee, the excuses that RV is throwing out in this article should more than clearly tell you why it gets reversed.

He is a terrible, terrible AD. He doesn't understand that attendance in hoops went from about 1200 to near 4000 every game in a decade, which is triple what it was and is today. And a real AD and staff could have really sold JJ's teams much harder to the community than they ever did.

But he's got the UNT 17, so...

 

Yep, and remember I'm the first one that told you mofos that this would be the end result of the Rick Villarreal-UNT 17 love affair. 

If Rick Villarreal cared anything about UNT or UNT athletics, he would resign immediately. He doesn't. He is in collect a check mode, and that is VERY apparent in the quotes in that article. 

His legacy will be the loss of the student fee and UNT's return to FCS level competition.

But vision, right @flyonthewall? 

#itsallajoke

[ntmeangreen11]

We need a new athletic director. 

[MGNation92]

I've never met UNT90 but this is what I imagine when I see him:

[untjim1995]

27 minutes ago, UNTFan23 said:

How do you (and the student body in general) propose the school pay for the debt used to fund the 78 million dollar stadium?  The university would need to cough up the money from somewhere to pay the bonds. You'd likely see a situation where the university robs Peter in order to pay Paul.

That would be up to the university to figure out. Its their debt. The student body had a vote to willfully place that fee on the backs of students in the future. There's no reason they cannot vote to rescind it, too. In the current economic environment, particularly with a university that has a lot of students who are working to pay for college or borrowing to pay for it, as well as having a more liberal bent to it, I sure as hell wouldn't want to be the chancellor, president, or BOR member that says a vote to rescind this fee will not be accepted.

Have you seen how those protests work on universities lately? Don't care what the reason is, it isn't going to be pretty if that happened. And it wouldn't happen here, because the leadership is incredibly sympathetic to that mindset of lower cost of attendance. That sucker would be gone and so would our FBS playing football program. Like a fart in the wind, it would be gone in a heartbeat...

[Ben Gooding]

3 hours ago, meangreenbob said:

RV........................................you sir, are the problem!! You know it, we know it, everyone knows it.

 

3 hours ago, meangreenbob said:

RV........................................you sir, are the problem!! You know it, we know it, everyone knows it.

 

3 hours ago, meangreenbob said:

RV........................................you sir, are the problem!! You know it, we know it, everyone knows it.

 

3 hours ago, meangreenbob said:

RV........................................you sir, are the problem!! You know it, we know it, everyone knows it.

 

3 hours ago, meangreenbob said:

RV........................................you sir, are the problem!! You know it, we know it, everyone knows it.

 

3 hours ago, meangreenbob said:

RV........................................you sir, are the problem!! You know it, we know it, everyone knows it.

 

3 hours ago, meangreenbob said:

RV........................................you sir, are the problem!! You know it, we know it, everyone knows it.

 

3 hours ago, meangreenbob said:

RV........................................you sir, are the problem!! You know it, we know it, everyone knows it.

 

3 hours ago, meangreenbob said:

RV........................................you sir, are the problem!! You know it, we know it, everyone knows it.

 

3 hours ago, meangreenbob said:

RV........................................you sir, are the problem!! You know it, we know it, everyone knows it.

 

3 hours ago, meangreenbob said:

RV........................................you sir, are the problem!! You know it, we know it, everyone knows it.

 

3 hours ago, meangreenbob said:

RV........................................you sir, are the problem!! You know it, we know it, everyone knows it.

 

3 hours ago, meangreenbob said:

RV........................................you sir, are the problem!! You know it, we know it, everyone knows it.

 

3 hours ago, meangreenbob said:

RV........................................you sir, are the problem!! You know it, we know it, everyone knows it.

 

3 hours ago, meangreenbob said:

RV........................................you sir, are the problem!! You know it, we know it, everyone knows it.

How many times must it be said until change happens. 

39 minutes ago, UNTFan23 said:

How do you (and the student body in general) propose the school pay for the debt used to fund the 78 million dollar stadium?  The university would need to cough up the money from somewhere to pay the bonds. You'd likely see a situation where the university robs Peter in order to pay Paul.

I would rather watch the athletic department go up in flames immediately than continue the current trajectory of death by a million cuts. 

[UNTFan23]

13 minutes ago, untjim1995 said:

That would be up to the university to figure out. Its their debt. The student body had a vote to willfully place that fee on the backs of students in the future. There's no reason they cannot vote to rescind it, too. In the current economic environment, particularly with a university that has a lot of students who are working to pay for college or borrowing to pay for it, as well as having a more liberal bent to it, I sure as hell wouldn't want to be the chancellor, president, or BOR member that says a vote to rescind this fee will not be accepted.

Have you seen how those protests work on universities lately? Don't care what the reason is, it isn't going to be pretty if that happened. And it wouldn't happen here, because the leadership is incredibly sympathetic to that mindset of lower cost of attendance. That sucker would be gone and so would our FBS playing football program. Like a fart in the wind, it would be gone in a heartbeat...

Problem is the university gets a lot of its revenue from students, so they'll get their pound of flesh to make the payments on those bonds one way or another. Perhaps no one gets raises for a couple years.  Sorry we'd love to give everyone a 2% raise but gotta pay that debt off somehow. We need more parking? Sorry we'd love to build more lots but gotta pay that debt of somehow.  What, we need to renovate a building? Sorry, we'd love to bring this old building up to current code and whatnot but gotta pay that debt off somehow. What, you student org wants money from the Student Services Fee fund? Sorry, we'd love to help you and your student organization but gotta pay that debt off somehow.

Problem with not making those payments is it affects the university's credit rating making debt more expensive to maintain or more difficult to get when needed.

9 minutes ago, Ben Gooding said:

I would rather watch the athletic department go up in flames immediately than continue the current trajectory of death by a million cuts. 

Kill of the athletics department and maybe 25% of what I'm giving now will go towards the ITDS department within the COB. I doubt I'm the only one that would significantly reduce if not completely eliminate support to the university if Athletics went away.

Edited April 14, 2016 by UNTFan23

[Ben Gooding]

2 hours ago, All About UNT said:

So glad to see that the idiotic statement of “When we were winning 20 games a year six years in a row in basketball, our season ticket numbers didn’t triple or quadruple or whatever,” Villarreal said. “A lot of places it would. Why does it not here? I’m not sure. It’s not because we’re not out there pursuing it or trying to make it happen.” 

I would have immediately responded with well "what is attendance at now compared to that era?".  I know that many feel the board is such a negative place now but how can you feel confident in our future when a man makes excuses such as these for our attendance and losses?

Having 4k a game while in the Sunbelt playing teams most kids hadn't heard of before they started following Mean Green Basketball is pretty dang good.  See what happened when you brought OSU and Tech into our house?  Filled the stadium up pretty nicely.  

Also if you feel like you are in a hostile work environment and in place with this attitude "I’ve never really in my entire career been around this kind of situation where we always want to look at the negative" then save your sanity and step down/retire.

The negative feelings is a direct result of one winning football season in a modern eternity.  You can't sugar coat that. Win and everyone (including 90) will shut up and cheer.  Don't win and you can expect status quo and people calling for you to leave.  Simple equation actually.

 

I agree. The opening comment of the podcast last night were Harry & Co. bitching about how negative this board is. Look at the underlined quote above. How can this board, fans, alumni, donors, and really any one associated with UNT athletics NOT be negative when the writing on the wall is blatantly obvious and our athletic director is out there feeding BS quotes like this to journalism students in yet another attempt to save his job or at least hang on to it for as long as he can. It's PATHETIC. All eyes should be on Neal Smatresk as this point.  

4 minutes ago, UNTFan23 said:

Problem is the university gets a lot of its revenue from students, so they'll get their pound of flesh to make the payments on those bonds one way or another. Perhaps no one gets raises for a couple years.  Sorry we'd love to give everyone a 2% raise but gotta pay that debt off somehow. We need more parking? Sorry we'd love to build more lots but gotta pay that debt of somehow.  What, we need to renovate a building? Sorry, we'd love to bring this old building up to current code and whatnot but gotta pay that debt off somehow. What, you student org wants money from the Student Services Fee fund? Sorry, we'd love to help you and your student organization but gotta pay that debt off somehow.

Problem with not making those payments is it affects the university's credit rating making debt more expensive to maintain or more difficult to get when needed.

Kill of the athletics department and maybe 25% of what I'm giving now will go towards the ITDS department within the COB. I doubt I'm the only one that would significantly reduce if not completely eliminate my support to the university if Athletics went away.

GOOD. Maybe, at this point, that NEEDS to happen. I would rather not give my money to anyone than give it to absolute incompetence. In this current stage of North Texas athletics, people that donate to athletics are literally pissing their hard earned money away. I can't make that any more clear. You either get that, or you don't. I, for one, am done giving money. I will buy tickets for football only and will buy that at the gate of the games I decide to attend. 

[untjim1995]

6 minutes ago, UNTFan23 said:

Problem is the university gets a lot of its revenue from students, so they'll get their pound of flesh to make the payments on those bonds one way or another. Perhaps no one gets raises for a couple years.  Sorry we'd love to give everyone a 2% raise but gotta pay that debt off somehow. We need more parking? Sorry we'd love to build more lots but gotta pay that debt of somehow.  What, we need to renovate a building? Sorry, we'd love to bring this old building up to current code and whatnot but gotta pay that debt off somehow. What, you student org wants money from the Student Services Fee fund? Sorry, we'd love to help you and your student organization but gotta pay that debt off somehow.

Problem with not making those payments is it affects the university's credit rating making debt more expensive to maintain or more difficult to get when needed.

Oh, they'll cover the debt...in the exact ways you just listed. Cost cutting would be huge, but if it happens, its all on RV's terrible leadership that was deemed adequate and acceptable under the BOR and the administration.

That fee should have been laying the golden egg for us. But because we have absolutely blown it since it got put in place by making poor hires and keeping awful personnel in place, as well as some of the most piss-poor scheduling ever seen, this is where we are.

13k and 2k for average attendance to North Texas games at Apogee and the Super Pit, venues that seat 30k and 10k. A record of 23-38 under his previous football hire and 42-53 under his current mens basketball coach. OOC games at Apogee have been Texas Southern, Idaho, Ball State, SMU, Nicholls State, and Portland State, with Butt Cookman this year to be added to the list and Army, Lamar, Incarnate Word, and Abilene Christian as OOC opponent at Apogee in the next three years. Spares a-plenty at the Super Pit in the last 4 years, including the most embarrassing loss ever remembered at the Super Pit in the last 15 years when SFA came here and had more fans than we did as they plastered us by 30.

People aren't gonna just stand by and keep paying fro complete garbage. They will either pay that gladly somewhere else to enjoy winning teams at their school or they are going to try to get it rescinded. Its pretty easy to see this being in our future.

11 minutes ago, Ben Gooding said:

I agree. The opening comment of the podcast last night were Harry & Co. bitching about how negative this board is. Look at the underlined quote above. How can this board, fans, alumni, donors, and really any one associated with UNT athletics NOT be negative when the writing on the wall is blatantly obvious and our athletic director is out there feeding BS quotes like this to journalism students in yet another attempt to save his job or at least hang on to it for as long as he can. It's PATHETIC. All eyes should be on Neal Smatresk as this point.  

Its impossible to know if he flat out doesn't give one rip about athletics here, which is probably why the BOR hired him, or if the BOR has made it completely clear that he doesn't need to make any waves regarding the AD, that the UNT 17 handle that instead.

Either way, its just a continuation of how things have typically been here in Denton from the President and above for decades.

[EagleMBA]

When you rob Peter to pay Paul, Peter gets sore.  It's very difficult to function properly with a sore Peter. Just sayin'.

[Christopher Walker]

4 hours ago, GMG24 said:

“When we were winning 20 games a year six years in a row in basketball, our season ticket numbers didn’t triple or quadruple or whatever,” Villarreal said. “A lot of places it would. Why does it not here? I’m not sure. It’s not because we’re not out there pursuing it or trying to make it happen.”

OMFG. It's your job, Rick -YOUR F'ING JOB- to find out and correct course. You know where this line wouldn't fly? My own staff position in the College of Music. The expectation of me -and has been all year- would be me to respond with, "Why does it not here? I wasn't sure, but I did some research and found these points out. Here's how we can do better / better inform people of XY & Z in the future..." Nope, apparently it's fine to make more than 10x what I do and have zero % accountability. 

Jesus H.

[UNT90]

1 hour ago, MGNation92 said:

I've never met UNT90 but this is what I imagine when I see him:

I think you'd be surprised.

And let me say I hate where this is headed. UNT has again decided to do nothing about a problem (Rick Villarreal) and will again pay a terrible price. It's an endless cycle at this wildly dysfunctional institution.

Edited April 14, 2016 by UNT90

[DeepGreen]

“When we were winning 20 games a year six years in a row in basketball, our season ticket numbers didn’t triple or quadruple or whatever,” Villarreal said. “A lot of places it would. Why does it not here? I’m not sure. It’s not because we’re not out there pursuing it or trying to make it happen.”

Correct me if I'm wrong, but prior to the JJ years and the 20 wins a season, we were under Trilli and whoever before him.  Thinking back on those games, UNT was pulling in less than 1,000 fans a game.  Box scores show crowds(?) of 800 or 900 a game.  Right?  Along comes JJ and the 20+ win seasons, and 4,000 a game attendance.

Just shows RV is full of crapola!  Always has been and always will be as long as he's here.  RV, just go away.  Please.

[UNT90]

Basketball attendance was on the rise until RICK VILLARREAL KILLED IT WITH A TERRIBLE COACHING HIRE WHICH HE REFUSED TO FIX!!

Good God! 

Talk about a delusional, narcassistic hanger on. Just leave! 

 

Edited April 14, 2016 by UNT90

[untjim1995]

44 minutes ago, Christopher Walker said:

OMFG. It's your job, Rick -YOUR F'ING JOB- to find out and correct course. You know where this line wouldn't fly? My own staff position in the College of Music. The expectation of me -and has been all year- would be me to respond with, "Why does it not here? I wasn't sure, but I did some research and found these points out. Here's how we can do better / better inform people of XY & Z in the future..." Nope, apparently it's fine to make more than 10x what I do and have zero % accountability. 

Jesus H.

That's because the leadership at the university cares GREATLY about the College of Music. Athletics is a whole other deal, obviously/

[UNT90]

#itsallajoke

#itsallajoke

#itsallajoke

#itsallajoke

#itsallajoke

#itsallajoke

#itsallajoke

#itsallajoke

#itsallajoke

[Wag Tag]

2 hours ago, untjim1995 said:

That would be up to the university to figure out. Its their debt. The student body had a vote to willfully place that fee on the backs of students in the future. There's no reason they cannot vote to rescind it, too. In the current economic environment, particularly with a university that has a lot of students who are working to pay for college or borrowing to pay for it, as well as having a more liberal bent to it, I sure as hell wouldn't want to be the chancellor, president, or BOR member that says a vote to rescind this fee will not be accepted.

Have you seen how those protests work on universities lately? Don't care what the reason is, it isn't going to be pretty if that happened. And it wouldn't happen here, because the leadership is incredibly sympathetic to that mindset of lower cost of attendance. That sucker would be gone and so would our FBS playing football program. Like a fart in the wind, it would be gone in a heartbeat...

You have any factual info or just another uneducated opinion? Concerning student fee?