On Sept. 3, San Diego State University’s chief financial officer, Agnes Wong-Nickerson, gave a report to the University Senate. The news was not good. While the CSU will receive the 5% increase in funding promised under the terms of the “Compact” between the state and the CSU system in 2022, in the following years, 2025-26, we can expect on 8% permanent funding cut. That’s a reduction of $252 million.
At the same time, the state expects SDSU to continue to increase its enrollment. So, more students, less money. A lot less money. (And as an example of how no good deed goes unpunished, because SDSU exceeded its enrollment expectation while other CSU campuses shrink, the Chancellor’s Office told SDSU that unless we continue to grow enrollment, we will face more funding cuts).
Even before the governor’s budget cuts, SDSU faced a deficit of approximately $14 million, leading to a planned reduction of $10 million across all divisions. Wong-Nickerson said that even before we found out about the coming 8% reduction, the university had planned to reduce funding by $10 million in 2024-25, and $5 million for the next two years.
The end result: crowded classrooms, reduced tenure-track hiring, increased reliance on adjuncts, and much more work for staff, since many of those who leave will not be replaced.
Not good.
Now, about two weeks after Wong-Nickerson’s report, SDSU announced that the football team will move from the Mountain West Conference to the Pac-12. The name, however, is misleading. Originally comprised of 12 teams, in August ten teams left for other opportunities. So the Pac-12 was really the “Pac-2.” Then, four teams from the Mountain West Conference, including SDSU, decided to join this group, making it effectively the “Pac-6.”
But there’s a price for leaving Mountain West: $20 million. SDSU’s Athletic Director, John Wicker, assured reporters that no “university funds, student fees or state money” will be used to pay the fee. So where will the money come from? “That’s on me and the development team to figure that out,” Wicker said.
This isn’t the first time that athletics program seems immune to SDSU’s budget woes.
In 2023, SDSU hired a new football coach, Sean Lewis, at a salary of $1,753,100 — $500,000 more than what the retiring Brady Hoke earned. Not only is he now the highest-paid coach in SDSU football history, his contract stipulates that he can “renegotiate” if SDSU changes conferences. So he stands to make even more money.
In March 2024, a day after Wong-Nickerson gave another sobering report, SDSU hired a new basketball coach, Brian Dutcher, whose salary will make him the highest-paid employee in the CSU system at a whopping $2.3 million. Dutcher earns roughly four times more than the highest paid president in the CSU system, our own President Adela de la Torre, who makes a little more than $500,000.
The difference between athletics and the rest of SDSU is stark. While the educational budget continues to dwindle, athletics spends as if there are no limits. They will say that the funds to pay the outsize salaries of these coaches (and we are not taking into account all the performance enhancements and the costs of their sub-coaches) comes from private donations and the like.
And that’s the point.
Athletics operates as a nearly independent entity whose finances are largely independent of the rest of the university. President Adela de la Torre and John Wicker, in their joint statement, assert that “This move benefits all corners of our institution.” But does it?
There’s no discussion of how the money football and basketball brings in will be used to address the educational budget’s deficits. Nor is there any discussion of how the “pots of money” the university is looking at to pay the Mountain West exit fee could be redirected to make up for the state’s budget reductions.
One has nothing to do with the other.
Which leads to the bizarre situation SDSU now faces: an increasingly cash-poor educational budget and a flush athletics program.
Something is seriously wrong with this picture.
Peter C. Herman is a professor of English literature at San Diego State University. He has published books on Shakespeare, Milton and the literature of terrorism, and essays in Salon, Newsweek, Inside Higher Ed, and Times of San Diego. His latest book is “Early Modern Others: Resisting Bias in Renaissance Literature” (Routledge).
