Which NCAA D1 Schools Have the Highest Reported Subsidies?

Almost all athletic departments of NCAA D1 schools receive reported subsidies from the university outside athletics. I say "reported" because the budget of NCAA schools sometimes is questioned or debated. Based on official reports (courtesy of The Chronicle of Higher Education) here are the top 25 schools (of 201 in the database of public schools) in terms of the subsidy that they receive from the broader university, where "subsidy" is defined as the sum of student fees and institutional transfers. The ranking is by proportion of the subsidy in the athletics department revenues.

	institution	subsidy as % of athletics spending	external revenue	subsidy
1	New Jersey Institute of Technology	90.6%	$1,237,517	$11,899,220
2	University of California-Riverside	89.0%	$1,696,085	$13,788,851
3	Central Connecticut State University	88.0%	$1,771,635	$12,959,383
4	Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis	87.8%	$994,818	$7,184,587
5	Morehead State University	86.2%	$1,491,916	$9,341,671
6	The University of Texas at Arlington	86.2%	$1,628,784	$10,152,846
7	Longwood University	86.1%	$1,358,361	$8,416,143
8	Winthrop University	85.9%	$1,773,621	$10,775,669
9	Utah Valley University	85.8%	$1,590,150	$9,601,419
10	Radford University	85.8%	$1,863,266	$11,237,598
11	Stephen F Austin State University	85.1%	$2,332,368	$13,364,737
12	Kennesaw State University	85.1%	$2,608,908	$14,907,125
13	University of Maryland Eastern Shore	84.8%	$846,088	$4,708,513
14	Stony Brook University	84.7%	$4,206,726	$23,298,044
15	Northern Kentucky University	84.6%	$1,837,533	$10,113,985
16	Cleveland State University	84.1%	$1,818,928	$9,627,983
17	Alcorn State University	84.1%	$1,010,423	$5,329,700
18	University of Missouri-Kansas City	83.6%	$1,875,601	$9,592,075
19	Morgan State University	83.6%	$1,522,142	$7,753,009
20	Eastern Michigan University	83.4%	$4,997,815	$25,083,708
21	East Tennessee State University	82.3%	$3,017,680	$14,071,113
22	George Mason University	81.9%	$3,807,345	$17,207,352
23	University of South Carolina-Upstate	81.7%	$1,304,471	$5,834,118
24	James Madison University	81.6%	$8,042,437	$35,725,049
25	Texas A & M University-Corpus Christi	81.6%	$1,940,154	$8,600,266

You'll note that all of of these schools are small, and are not what people traditionally think of when they think of big-time college athletics.  Of the 201 schools, 130 receive more than a 50% subsidy, so it is common and the numbers are significant. The median subsidy of these 130 schools is $11 million.

No matter how you do the budget accounting, it seems safe to conclude that for the majority of D1 schools, athletics is not a money-making activity. In that sense, D1 college sports is more like schools of music than the NBA or NFL.

In an upcoming post I'll take a look at the other end of the rankings where the numbers look distinctly different.