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A faculty group at Rutgers University passed a resolution last week to express its concern and disappointment in the university’s athletic spending, NJ.com reported.
A report on the finances of the athletics program, released about two months ago, revealed an almost $40 million deficit in the 2016 fiscal year.
In response, the Rutgers New Brunswick Faculty Group unanimously passed a resolution to publicly voice its position about the overspending.
“The New Brunswick Faculty Council deplores the university administration's continuing failure to eliminate or even reduce the athletics program's chronic deficit spending and its continuing reliance on millions of dollars in student fees and general university funds to pay for the program's deficits -- all of which harms the university's academic mission,” the resolution says.
The athletics director, Pat Hobbs, defended the decision in a statement, saying that the department is “writing what will be the greatest chapter in Rutgers athletics history. We will be competitive, and we will do that in a fiscally prudent manner.”
He explained the spending as an investment that will make the program stronger and easier to grow in the future.
Rutgers also joined the Big Ten conference to help the program “be in a position to generate a positive cash flow for the university,” a spokeswoman for President Robert Barchi said.
Previously, Barchi estimated that Rutgers’s membership in the Big Ten would result in $200 million in revenue in the first 10 years.
