2015 Equity in Athletics Data Analysis Report is released

The Carnegie Mellon Athletics Department released its annual Equity in Athletics report this Thursday, a data set on varsity athletic programs, collected annually from colleges and universities around the country.

The report shows growing participation in the Women’s Varsity teams at Carnegie Mellon, buoyed by the addition of the varsity women’s golf team. The data also indicates another year of strong athletic participation on the varsity teams and a continued investment in all of the teams. Previous results of the Equity in Athletics Data are available online for Carnegie Mellon and all other schools on the United States Department of Education’s website.

In 2013, 278 men and 143 women participated in varsity athletics at Carnegie Mellon, good for eight and six percent, respectively, of the male and female undergraduate populations.

The report shows that male athletic participation has grown by five athletes, while female participation has grown by 14. In fact, female participation is up 29 people, or 23 percent, since 2003, while male participation has dropped 21 athletes over the same period.

Since the report is broken down by gender, it is easy to see general equality between support for the men’s and women’s teams.

Although the men’s teams receive slightly more funding, this is proportional to the higher number of male participants. Overall, the athletics department spends slightly more per female athlete, spending $4238 per woman to $3809 per man.

The coaches’ salaries are likewise similar and inequalities are getting smaller, with women’s coaches averaging a salary $2825 less than those of men’s teams in the current report, but averaging a salary $4023 more than those of men’s teams in 2013–14.

The report does show that Carnegie Mellon still has progress to make, with only two female head coaches across all athletic teams, for women’s volleyball and women’s basketball.

Carnegie Mellon lags a little behind rival schools like Washington University in St. Louis, whose report from last year indicates four female head coaches.

Outside of the gender gap, the data gives some useful information about the Carnegie Mellon athletic program. In terms of expense, football — unsurprisingly — leads all sports, costing $602,106. The sheer number of athletes on the team helps account for this, with more participants than any other two teams combined (122 athletes).

The next most costly teams behind football are Men’s Basketball ($225,233), Women’s Basketball ($217,010), Women’s Volleyball ($171,108), and Women’s Soccer ($170,398).

Interestingly, due to the much smaller team sizes, all of these teams have significantly higher expense per athlete than the football team does, led by Women’s Basketball, which, with only 12 players, boasts an average cost per athlete of $18,084.

These statistics actually indicate that Carnegie Mellon focuses on football more than the other schools in the University Athletic Association (UAA), the conference that the university competes in. While the Carnegie Mellon football team leads the conference in terms of football expense by a small margin, other schools outspend Carnegie Mellon dramatically in most of the other sports. During the 2013–14 seasons, the Carnegie Mellon Athletic Department fell in the middle of the pack in terms of spending, fifth of the eight schools in the conference, with some schools, like Washington University and New York University, spending over 150 percent more on their athletics.

Other noteworthy information includes the breakdown of total cost and expense for Carnegie Mellon relative to other universities in the conference.

The report shows that Carnegie Mellon has similar revenue levels for the 2013–14 athletic season, with an slight increase largely offsetting additional expenses for the new varsity women’s golf team. As a result of the small increase in revenue, the Athletics Department maintained nearly an identical net income to the previous year.

The report indicates a profit of $300,900 in 2014-15, a bit more than the $289,051 from 2013–14.

Carnegie Mellon’s reported profits are well above average in the UAA, where four of the eight participating schools have listed no profit at all for the 2013–14 season, and only Washington University, with a listed profit of $843,743, has a higher profit margin.

Overall, the report shows a relative stability throughout the programs, which hopefully indicates another strong season for the Carnegie Mellon athletic teams.