Although a loss is never a good thing, on paper that may be - any accountants out there wan't to opine? Universities are businesses. If you are going to carry forward a loss, go big!
The lost revenue from football tickets sales, concessions, parking alone has to be an impressive number. I'll bet fund raising tired to all causes dropped by more than 50% as well. The list is probably very long.
"Although a loss is never a good thing, on paper that may be - any accountants out there wan't to opine? Universities are businesses."
Yes, universities are businesses, and big businesses at that. They like to represent themselves as "not for profit" as if that means indifferent to the bottom line rather than a misnomer of the tax code phrase "not for
individual profit" because posturing as indifferent to the bottom line is popular with the reserve army of the economically illiterate,
I assure you as a CPA that any enterprise that is run according to the popular misconception of indifferent to the bottom line is either a hobby or will soon be insolvent and bankrupt.
A loss is never a good thing, but unlike the kind of "paper losses" you might incur if your investment holdings go down in value, but you don't sell pending a reversal, the losses of last year are real.
"The lost revenue from football tickets sales, concessions, parking alone has to be an impressive number."
But remember, games were played in front of television cameras-and there's plenty of money in the sale of broadcast royalties. Even if there were substantial losses, decisions about future operations are made according to future expectations, not past results.
On the other hand
COVID related sports losses are nothing compared to the tsunami headed their way, in what's supposed to be their primary function as degree granting educational institutions.
The beginning is the the proposed consolidation of Bloomsburg, Lock Haven and Mansfield and the proposed consolidation of Clarion, California and Edinboro universities.
The birthrate has been in the swirly porcelain vessel for about about a decade and a half and that means fewer students in the next couple of years, a situation which is worsened by the fact that all those buildings and tenured positions make universities high fixed cost operations that mean that fewer students mean higher tuitions or reductions of some kind. There's already schools that court foreign students and count on them to fill the rolls every year. It's also why the "free tuition" movement is essentially a way to push a greater proportion of a diminishing number of college age students, plus some adults back into Big Ed's orbit, i.e. corporate welfare.
If colleges and universities were publicly traded, they'd be great short opportunities.
