In the case of Duke’s Department of Athletics, the numbers tell the story, and they are striking.

In fiscal year 1995-1996, the department’s operating budget totaled $18 million. And in the current fiscal year, the department’s budget is $60.3 million.

Based on these figures, the athletics department does not turn a profit for the University.

In May 2008, the University decided to increase the annual subsidy paid from the University’s central fund to the athletics department from $7.2 million to $15 million. Even then, in fiscal year 2008-2009, expenses exceeded revenue by almost $1 million, and that deficit was covered by the department’s dwindling reserve funding. 

In fact, for several years, as both the department’s budget and the size of the University subsidy have increased, deficit spending has become the norm.

Now, the University is trying to close a $125 million deficit in its general operating budget with, among other mechanisms, early retirement packages for employees, cuts to academic department funding and reductions in faculty hiring.

Large-scale layoffs are being avoided at all costs, although Executive Vice President Tallman Trask has said that layoffs may well become necessary in anticipation of fiscal year 2010-2011.

But while the University is in the middle of implementing sophisticated, difficult and wide-ranging budget reductions in response to the recession, the athletics department is trimming fat from its extravagant budget by reducing media luncheons and printing costs.

Revenues to the department are down by about 7 or 8 percent, but costs have only been cut by about 5 percent. In a paltry piece of window-dressing, the University subsidy was cut to $14.5 million. 

In short, the athletics department has come to depend on the University to support its extravagant spending. And when the University needs to save every dime it can, and every sector of the University is sacrificing, the athletics department is cutting next to nothing.

For it appears that although the department has received more and more money from the University to help fund substantial increases in facilities, scholarships and coaches’ salaries, the University has not acquired any leverage over the athletics department in return.

The University now finds itself inexplicably unable to demand major cuts to the athletics department’s budget in a time of general scarcity.

As a consequence, the University is funding the athletics department’s largesse with money that could directly be used to fill crucial faculty openings or prop up the Multicultural Center—actions that are central to the mission of the University. 

The Department of Athletics is in part to blame for this state of affairs. Its costs have ballooned in recent years, without comparable increases in its revenues.

Far from laying out a plan to reduce its budget, the department’s 2008 strategic plan, “Unrivaled Ambition,” in fact called for a larger University subsidy and massive renovations to almost every athletic facility on campus.

The real blame, however, does not lie with the athletics department for wanting to spend money.

It lies with the University for failing, over the long term, to rein in the steadily increasing cost of athletics to Duke. During the recession, this failure of oversight has become an even more clear failure of priorities, which should be corrected as soon as possible. At the very least, it should be explained.