Tallahassee Democrat reporter Jordan Culver discussed the
details that Athletic Director Milton Overton Jr. and Chief Financial Officer
Angela Poole shared during a Board of Trustees workshop.
“FAMU must spend $622,000 for structural repairs and
internal stair replacement or [Bragg Memorial Stadium] will not be cleared for
fall competition,” Culver tweeted yesterday.
The university has had less to spend on athletics in recent years mainly
because of the enrollment decline, which has reduced the amount that FAMU receives
from student athletic fees.
FAMU spent $10,124,131 on athletics back in 2012-2013 back
when fall enrollment was at 12,051. That has gone down every year since then
mainly due to the enrollment decline.
FAMU budgeted $8,937,500 for athletics this year and expects to
have an end-of-the-year deficit of about $650,000. Fall 2016 enrollment is
9,612.
Enrollments at historically black colleges and universities
(HBCUs) all across the nation were hurt by the overhaul of the federal financial
aid program in 2011. FAMU continued to lose students during the Mangum
presidency (April 2014-September 2016).
Mangum defended the enrollment decline by stating that: “Quantity
does have to be sacrificed in order to get quality.”
But North Carolina A&T University, North Carolina Central University and Jackson State University all succeeded in growing their enrollments
and raising their average freshman GPAs at the same time. All three
universities had enrollment bumps with freshman classes that had 3.0+ average
GPAs in 2015-2016.
