Several years ago, I could think of no better “average job” in the sport of swimming than working at a decently paying college. This was partly colored by the fact that I had the time of my life coaching for almost nothing (University of Pennsylvania) and more than nothing (Georgia Tech).
If you coached at a decent college, you got to work in a professional environment., at least as far as swimming goes You probably had some benefits, got some nice free polos to wear and got to stay at the Hampton Inn for travel meets. You had a job that you could tell people outside of the world of swimming you were doing and it made some kind of sense to them.
Unfortunately, for quite a while now, most colleges, and by extension their athletic programs, have been a scam. Many people- coaches, parents of college kids, college kids, athletic administrators, alumni, Presidents of colleges and universities- have been willing to go along with the scam. It was working alright for them. Even setting aside the massive disruption of Covid, the foundation was starting to crack.
Take, for example, my alma mater Colby College. For the 2020-21 school year, the estimated cost of attendance is…holy crap! It’s 76-77 THOUSAND DOLLARS. I didn’t even think it was that bad. When I started going to Colby, the cost was somewhere a little more than half of that amount, and already people were starting to ask themselves if it was sane.
Let there be no more questioning. It is completely, maniacally crazy to spend more than $300k on a Bachelor’s Degree. Yes, I know that many people that attend don’t pay this sticker price but it is in no way justifiable. This number just inflates to an even more ridiculous sum year after year and has been doing so for decades.
Now, this might be the point at which you’re asking yourself, “what the heck does this have to do with swimming?”. To which I answer- if you already read this blog you don’t exactly come here for the breaststroke tips amiright? Fine, fine, I’ll get there.
Colleges are big business. Like many big businesses, they’ve been set up to enrich a very small amount of people at the expense of a large group of people. Colleges take advantage of the prestige they have created to pay low wages to people who actually directly serve students, like adjunct professors and coaches.
Below them is an even more taken advantage of group that staffs the dining hall, keeps the dorms clean and maintains the student center.
Above them all, with each step more egregiously overpaid than the next, are administrators. Now, before you get your boxer briefs in a bunch, let me say that I don’t think there is no need for some kind of administration.
But there is probably a happy medium between no administration and what takes place at my former employer. Georgia Tech has twelve people listed in their “Executive Staff” department. I can guarantee you that most of these people have little to know impact on the experience of the athletes that play there, much less the coaches they supposedly “administrate”.
These are the type of people who say publicly that they have to cut swimming programs because they have to “manage the budget” of an athletic department but despite “managing a budget” of millions of dollars would quickly put the only Starbucks in an airport terminal out of business.
Let me give you one example of how athletic departments operate that you should consider before forking over your dollars to “endow” another program. When I came to Georgia Tech, it was 2009 and the country was in the midst of a financial crisis. Belts were being tightened, we were told. What this meant, practically, was that our salaries were frozen. Scholarships were reduced.
In other words, there was a reduction in funding to the athletes in coaches. Guess who got a raise though? Athletic administrators! Guess what else wasn’t reduced? Our “annual” non-scholarship, non-salary budget. In fact, at the end of the year we still “had money left” and had to go on a spending spree in order to spend our budget.
This practice was tacitly expected from the administrator class, who have somehow convinced themselves that line-item budget categories are far more important than the people who actually do the sporting or those that directly help them.
(Note: after reading this part, I questioned whether I would ever get employed in college swimming again before deciding “SCREW IT”. Any administrator that gets their feelings hurt by the above is someone I don’t want to work for anyway and should be out of a job)
This is a bummer for swimming, of course, since we as a sport haven’t figured out a way to make this administrator class rich. Thus, they look at swimming in many cases as something that hampers their ambition.
When I got into college sports, I wasn’t naive about where swimming sat in the priorities of Division 1 schools. Still, I thought that if you raised some money, had athletes doing well in school and representing the school with some class, you were alright. That’s just wrong, and we need to consider cutting bait on a system that not only doesn’t value us, but oftentimes perceives us as having negative value.
To end this on a positive note, I want to say that one thing that actually still makes sense in this day and age is public universities. Having been through my own experience at a Private College for the Rich, I can tell you that while there is absolutely no justification for their 300k price tag, the in-state cost of attendance at your local university presents a far better value.
For instance, consider the schools I recently did work for and compare them. Cleveland State is barely 1/3 the price for an Ohio resident at $27k a year. Washington State clocks in at 28k. University of Houston is insanely cheap (when considered in this context) at around $23k.
Now, I believe these numbers would be even lower if such schools were focused on just doing a good job educating young people and didn’t have to try and compete with the extremely expensive Private College for the Rich. Still, you would be so much better off in life if, living in Texas, you attended the University of Houston than going anywhere out of state.
Finally, having met the kids that attend these schools and populate their swim teams, I can tell you that they have at least as much ingenuity, intelligence and oftentimes a dash more grit than your average Rich Kid like me. So really, this could be one of the easiest decisions you make.
