IU foots athletes' tutoring bill

IU academic units will pay up to an estimated $750,000 a year for tutorial services exclusively for student athletes, making IU the only school in the Big Ten whose academic units -- and not athletics department -- are monetarily responsible for such services.\nThe new source of funding is part of a twofold reform advocated by IU President Adam Herbert regarding academic support services for athletes. In addition to relieving the athletics department of advising costs, the reform calls for the primary athletes' academic advisers to report to the Vice President for Academic Affairs or a designee of his office. The athletics department will continue to tutor and provide the academic support.\nIn a prepared statement, Herbert rebuffed complaints that IU will be the only Big Ten school whose academic units will fund tutorial services for athletes, saying IU "does not simply copy the practices of other universities when matters of core principles or values are involved."\n"IU has a long tradition of national leadership in standing up for matters of academic principle," the statement reads. "This policy is a continuation of that tradition. It reinforces the principle that student guidance, counseling and tutorial services are academic, not athletic, responsibilities." \nOther institutions have switched their reporting lines for academic support services from athletics departments to the academic wings following a scandal at the University of Minnesota. Investigators there found systematic academic misconduct in the men's basketball program from 1993 to 1998, and concluded the men's basketball coach knew academic counseling staff members were producing the course work turned in by at least 18 players.\nBob Eno, an IU professor and co-chairman of the national Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics, praised the IU athletic advising office as "exceptionally good," but said a reporting line change was necessary to safeguard against any possible academic fraud. \n"I think all of us on the faculty would agree that having a reporting line to the academic side is a wise thing to do," Eno said. "It's a good idea to have the chief academic officer of the University lying awake at night worrying what happens in athletics." \nEno's coalition, an alliance of faculty senates promoting reform in collegiate sports, pushed strongly for a shift in the reporting line, but did not back a shift in the funding for athletes' academic support services, which has proven a contentious aspect of the IU reform.\n"(The coalition) has never advocated that the financial burden be shifted from academics to athletics," Eno said. "We maintain that any decisions about allocating money should be taken openly in consultation with the faculty." \nThe implication would have been a proposal of the shift in financial responsibility rather than an announcement, Eno said. \nIU Spokesman Larry MacIntyre said the decision to have academic units provide the funding was made in "extensive" discussions between Herbert, IU-Bloomington Interim Chancellor Ken Gros Louis, Vice President for Student Development and Diversity Charlie Nelms and representatives of the athletics department.\nGros Louis said the feeling of their meetings was that "athletes deserve the same advantages other students did in terms of what they could benefit in the support to their academic work."\nIU academics paid $250,000 this year for the tutorial services and will pay $500,000 next year for the services. By the third year, the amount will be an estimated $750,000 per year, or whatever level is needed to maintain the service. \nInternal reports have shown the IU Athletics Department has been running a deficit since 1998.\nMacIntyre dismissed the suggestion that academic units will be "subsidizing" the athletic department. He said academic units will not be paying money to the athletics department for tutorial services, but that the athletics department will simply be no longer responsible for the services.\n"This is not a funding thing, this is leadership," he said. \nIn his prepared statement, Herbert said the athletics department could supplement the academic services, but the "provision of basic academic support is not the financial responsibility of an administrative auxiliary unit."\nBut subsidies and a lack of transparency are exactly the concern some faculty members have, especially a newly approved state budget that reduces support for IU operating funding by $4.7 million over the next two years.\n"We have to sharpen our pencils on the academic side. We've been very clever (in getting by with cutback resources), but it's getting tougher and tougher, and we can't go on any longer without cutting programs," said SPEA professor Bob Kravchuk, the co-chairman of the Bloomington Faculty Council's Budgetary Affairs Committee.\nKravchuk said the threat of faculty reducing resources while students continue to pay a $30 athletics fee has left a "very bitter taste in the faculty council's mouth."\nTelecommunications professor Herb Terry, the other co-chairman of the Budgetary Affairs Committee, said while he is not opposed to campus providing academic support for athletes, he was opposed to the way the decision was reached. \nTerry echoed some resentment among faculty that the decision to fund these athletic tutorial services was announced to the BFC, rather than discussed with them.\n"It wasn't very transparent," Terry said. "The historical relationship between the chancellor and the Budgetary Affairs Committee of the BFC was not followed here. The historical understanding is that for an expenditure of this magnitude, the BAC should have been consulted."\nTerry added he hoped the money to provide these services would come out of new things the campus won't do now rather than cutting back previously expenditures to pay for it.\n"We've had so many lean years," he said. "There's not a lot of fat to cut."\n-- Contact Senior Writer Tony Sams at ajsams@indiana.edu.