

NEW BRUNSWICK — The Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics unveiled a searchable database today that gives the public a glimpse into how much state colleges are spending on sports.

The database -- called the Athletic and Academic Spending Database for NCAA Division I -- details academic, athletic and football spending data at more than 220 public Division 1 colleges. The information comes from several publicly-available reports.

“College athletics has the potential for so much good, but the current trajectory of spending is unsustainable,” said William E. “Brit” Kirwan, chancellor of the University System of Maryland and co-chairman of the Knight Commission. “We already see levels of spending at some universities that require them to divert substantial resources from their core academic responsibilities. We are hopeful this online database will help university leaders and policymakers develop practices and policies that bring better balance to athletic expenditures within the broader institutional missions.”

The privately-funded Knight Commission, founded in 1989, has been pushing for reforms in college athletics and advocating for more transparency in sports spending at state schools.

The database will help keep track of trends in college athletics spending, commission officials said. For example, the data shows athletics spending per athlete grew faster than academic spending in every NCAA Division 1 subdivision between 2005 and 2011.

At Rutgers University, annual academic sending increased 12 percent per student (from $19,509 to $21,930) between 2005 and 2011, according to the database. Meanwhile, Rutgers increased spending on athletics by 106 percent per athlete (from $48,037 to $98,997) during the same time period.

The database also includes information on Rutgers' spending on football scholarships, coaching salaries, instructional spending and debt on facilities.

Similar information is also available for New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, which is a Division 1 school without a football team. In 2011, NJIT spent $16,029 per student on academic spending while spending $41,902 per athlete on athletics, according to the database.

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