For too long, athletics departments have sustained rates of increase in their budgets that far outpace the increases at the university as a whole -- a tempo that both financial experts and those at the helm of colleges and universities agree cannot be protracted for long.

To make matters worse, increasingly fewer schools post revenues that exceed expenses. That problem likely will grow worse if media contracts begin to shrink, an outcome that many industry observers regard as a near certainty.

NCAA President Myles Brand made most of those points during his January 2005 State of the Association address, and few have argued with him since. In the intervening time, a number of member institutions have moved beyond acknowledging the problem and have begun to make hard choices about how they will afford intercollegiate athletics in both the near and distant futures.

The most common responses involve increased ticket sales and creative marketing as sources of new revenue.

And when the need is immediate, institutions are asking for new or increased student fees -- an option that might have been considered a last resort only a few years ago.

Some argue that athletics departments should not depend on student fees, particularly if the students get little in return for their cash. Charging a student fee for athletics if they receive free entry into sporting events seems more fair than charging the fee and charging admission for seats that might not be as close to the action as those occupied by alumni who have made hefty donations to the athletics department.

Involving students in the process in a meaningful way seems to be the most acceptable way of instituting an athletics fee increase, if member institutions see that revenue stream as the last option open to them.

Raising fees wasn't trendy at Division I institutions until recently when, schools began to show an increasing reliance on such sources of revenue. Many Divisions II and III schools already rely heavily on student fees for a major portion of their athletics funding.

According to the most recent NCAA research, average revenues from student fees increased by 30 percent at Division I-A institutions, 22 percent in Division I-AA and 8 percent in Division I-AAA. In Division II, football-playing institutions saw student fee revenues increase 17 percent and 27 percent at institutions without football.

Generally, students pay fees to receive services -- some fees such as a health fee or a transportation fee come with obvious services most students use. An athletics fee, however, is often not as straightforward -- many students profess that they don't attend sporting events or benefit in any way from their institution's athletics program. Instituting or raising an athletics fee can raise the ire of students who believe their money would be better spent on a service they'll actually use.

But some argue that athletics bring a bigger value to a university than homecoming football games and basketball tournaments.

The pros of increased fees...

Students at several NCAA institutions have voted to increase their own annual fees to support athletics. Among them are the University of Northern Colorado, whose students voted in April to help pay for an overhaul of athletics facilities, and the University of Texas at Arlington.

In the fall of 2007, the University of North Carolina at Pembroke will field a football team because students agreed to a fee increase. While facilities will be funded with private donations, the bulk of the new program's budget will be paid by an almost 50 percent increase in the school's athletics fee. As a Division II institution, much of the athletics department's budget already comes from student fees, but Athletics Director Daniel Kenney said the increase was substantial (from $378 per year to $518 per year) and, unlike many fee increases, overwhelmingly supported by the student body.

North Carolina-Pembroke began studying the possibility of adding football in the late 1990s and determined that without a major new source of income, a football program would be impossible.

"The only way that we could consider it was if our enrollment significantly went up, and then we would have to charge a pretty big increase in our athletics fee," Kenney said.

At that time, student enrollment was just under 3,000. Over the intervening years, enrollment began to climb. By 2005, it has nearly doubled. The increased enrollment provided the school with an opportunity to put the question to the students: Did they want a football program on campus? If so, would they be willing to foot the bill?

Kenney said the school conducted two surveys -- one asking if the students wanted football and a second, more detailed, survey that included asking if they would be willing to see their student fees rise substantially to pay for the program. In the first survey, 91 percent of students indicated they wanted the program. About 70 percent said they would be willing to pay for it -- an overwhelming majority by most standards and unusual at a time when students at many campuses balk at any fee increase.

According to Kenney, the students wanted something to bring them together, and they saw from their high-school days that football was a way to do that.

"The center of a lot of these kids' social universe in high school is football games on Friday night, and then when they come to a campus like ours that's located in a small, rural setting and they don't have that football experience, there's something amiss for them socially," Kenney said.

The benefits of the program won't stop at the athletics department doors. Kenney said the North Carolina-Pembroke music school was thrilled at the addition because of the opportunity to create a marching band, which in turn could help those music students with future employment. The institution's athletic training department will be able to offer its students new experiences as well. And officials expect the addition to bring retention figures up. Kenney said just the promise of the sport has brought in more financial gifts to the university as a whole by raising awareness about other programs.

When students at North Carolina-Pembroke were asked if a football team would help improve the perception of the university, 88 percent said it would.

"Graduating from a university with football is perceived to be a good thing by our students. It might be that the student who graduates from a school with football is viewed differently than the student who doesn't by prospective employers," Kenney said. "The student may never get to an athletics event, but a future employer may become aware of his or her alma mater through athletics."

The cons of increased fees...

However, many more institutions face a struggle with their students over bolstering their athletics programs with fee increases. In fact, most student fee increases to support athletics are met with considerable resistance. Students believe if they don't attend games, they shouldn't have to pay the fee, sometimes voicing their opinions loudly when such a fee increase is proposed. In the last 18 months, Georgia State University and the University of Montana were among several institutions with student bodies that vehemently opposed increased fees.

A $2-per-credit-hour increase proposed and approved earlier this year by the board of trustees at Florida Atlantic University is projected to raise about $1.25 million for the institution's football team, which has been mired in red ink since its inception in 2001. That institution also is using other sources to help balance the budget, including game guarantees, ticket sales and fund-raising.

Jake Smith, editor of The University Press, Florida Atlantic's student newspaper, said that the administration made a considerable effort to include students in the decision, even forming a committee that included voting student government representatives. The group was designed to explore different sources of funding, including reallocation of funds from other areas of the university. However, Smith said, the appointed students did not take advantage of the opportunity to voice their opinion and offer alternate solutions to a fee increase until the issue was before the university's governing board -- attendance at the committee meetings was sparse. At the board's final meeting, though, students came out in force to oppose the increase.

"They were reading letters from kids who couldn't be there and they had this whole big opposition to it," Smith said. "At the last minute they said we don't support this."

Student body president Dan Wilson, a voting member of the institution's board of trustees, cast the only vote against the proposal. Smith said, however, that he doesn't think the student government voice should necessarily be labeled as the voice of the student body.

"A lot of students on campus are for it. They support it because in their opinion it's like (a nominal amount of money). They're not worried about it too much," Smith said.

Smith said he believes the athletics department is sometimes an easy target for people who want to complain about funding.

"It is not fair to pigeon-hole sports as this over-funded project. At (Florida Atlantic), there are a lot of projects that get a lot of funding, and each project obviously wants more," Smith said. "Many students don't go to genetics class or any upper-division science classes, and they don't visit the labs, but should we stop paying for professors to research how to heal damaged heart tissue or cure certain forms of cancer?"

Smith acknowledged that football games aren't as globally important as finding a cure for cancer, but "football makes many people happy."

"In a perfect world, cancer (research) and football would be funded fully with no questions, but that can't happen. Until then, everyone has to split the pie and do the best they can with the dollars they get," he said.

Many of those who were opposed to the increase cited the institution not having its own football stadium as a reason. The team practices in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, about 20 minutes south of Florida Atlantic's main campus in Boca Raton, Florida. Florida Atlantic has six branch campuses stretched over 100 miles. Smith said much of the opposition came from the students on campuses farthest north of Fort Lauderdale because of the travel involved in attending football games. Tickets are free to students.

Solving the bigger problem

Florida State University students saw increases proposed in both their athletics fee and activities and service fee in the last year -- increases that many students opposed. Students there also receive free tickets to athletics events.

"As a student, you can't really complain because you're getting those things for free, but where does it end?" said D.C. Reeves, editor of the student newspaper at Florida State. "If they did it like (other state institutions) do, where you pay for your student season ticket, you don't have that leverage that you do here. They can always say, 'You get a free student ticket' and it's never a problem."

Reeves indicated that students at his institution did not support the increase for athletics or a more recent proposed increase in the activities and service fee, which would fund moving intramural fields to an improved location near the school's engineering campus. That increase is not finalized.

Whether leaning on student fees as a first choice or a last resort to help fund the athletics enterprise, NCAA institutions are at least considering that method as among their array of options. Jeff Orleans, executive director of the Council of Ivy Group Presidents, says that while such creativity in funding is a positive short-term solution, it still doesn't address the warnings posed by the trend of increased athletics spending.

"There seems to be a lot of room for schools to make different kinds of economic and financial decisions in ways that make sense to them," Orleans said. "On the other hand, we've got some expenditures in the enterprise that everybody involved believes probably are excessive. We don't seem to have a way of disciplining the expenditures. Instead, we keep looking for revenue ... the combined system of revenues and expenditures seems to be on an endless treadmill that everybody wants to exit. We don't have a clear way to get off, though."

Orleans agrees with tackling the problem in much the same way the Association confronted academic reform -- which NCAA President Myles Brand did last spring by appointing a presidential task force with access to data and outside experts to study the issue and recommend possible solutions.

Orleans also said the NCAA ought to examine itself in the business model -- using business in the sense of money coming in and out and balancing budgets, not in the politically charged sense of over-commercialization.

"I don't know that we've ever sat down and looked at ourselves the way a Fortune 500 company would look at its revenues and expenses and see if we could learn something," he said. "The first step is to look at ourselves as a financial entity and do the kind of analysis of all our different components that a large financial entity would do."

Such an analysis could put the Association on the road to financial reform, much like the implementation of the Academic Progress Rate has done for academic reform, Orleans said.

"I think people feel that although there are some bumps, we're on a good road with (the APR)," he said. "I'd like to see if there's something similar we could do in the financial realm."

Coming in the October 24 issue: How state cutbacks have affected public institutions.