A link to this article was posted on laxpower today: http://network.laxpower.com/laxforum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=34789&start=100
Thought the eLynah crowd would be interested. Key quote from Andy:
Cornell athletic director Andy Noel said the Big Red, based in Ithaca, New York, have cut their budget, put a freeze on construction and aren't hiring.
"This is a serious challenge," he said. "It's not an around-the-fringes kind of thing. For the past decade, we've been reducing around the edges.
Noel, who wouldn't say what programs the school is paring back to reduce costs, said it's doubtful the Ivys will be saved by some last-minute ingenuity.
"Our universities have been generating new, creative revenue streams for a while," Noel said. "We're not going to launch something new and different and money-generating now that we didn't think of last year."
MetaEzra has run a couple of posts about the University's budget situation recently; I guess it's not surprising that this might affect Athletics as well.
I recall reading an email from Athletics that indicated that hockey had exceeded it's fundraising goal for the year. (Not sure when that cycle ends. June?) One would hope that means that there wouldn't need to be any further cuts for the program (selfishly focusing only on men's hockey).
I guess that raises the question, how do they set their fundraising goals both for the department a whole and for individual programs? Is it purely need based (we need $x dollars to operate) or is it also based on an estimate of what is achievable?