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Top schools ease financial strain on students

When Reece Anderson started thinking about going to graduate school and leaving his job as director of business operations at a junior hockey league team in Austin, Minn., he knew the investment would only make sense if it gave his career in sports a significant jump-start.

“I didn’t want to just get any master’s degree,” said Anderson, a second-year University of South Florida student who will spend his residency in partnership development with the Tampa Bay Lightning this year after working part time in athletics at the school in his first year. “I wanted a degree that would put me in a position to get a great job afterward; to learn a lot and to network. If I didn’t see that opportunity, I was going to stay where I was and work up from there and grind it out.”

Reece Anderson turned to grad school to jump-start his career.
Photo by: University of South Florida
In conversations with 16 students and recent grads of the USF program over a two-day span in June, time and again they echoed two major themes:

They chose the program because it offered extensive work experience.

The combination of a tuition waiver and the chance to get paid for their work, which together made it possible for most who qualified for in-state tuition to get an MBA without taking out a loan, made the decision to return to school a far easier one.

“You’re not interning at USF for free and then having to work the graveyard shift at Wal-Mart just to keep the lights on,” said Andrew Busot, who spent his first year in athletics at USF and will serve his residency in activation with the Lightning. “And, for me, the tuition waiver takes the loans out of the conversation completely. I’ll have an MBA and won’t owe anything on it.”

Bill Sutton, founding director of USF’s program, knew that to compete with the incumbent sports administration programs such as Ohio University and the University of Massachusetts for the top sports MBA candidates, he would have to take large slices out of the cost of a USF dual-degree.

At UMass, all but one MBA student in the current graduating class received packages that fully funded tuition and fees for both years of the program, said Steve McKelvey, associate chair of the sport management program at UMass.

UMass long has guaranteed its students a full ride in their second year, which includes a 10-hour-a-week graduate assistant position that pays $21 an hour, or about $8,500 for the academic year, a rate guaranteed because the wages of UMass grad assistants are negotiated by their union. Most of the slots are for teaching assistants, helping professors in the school’s 500-student undergrad program, but some work on research or consulting projects.

“Our goal has become to fully fund everybody for both years, guaranteed, and we’re pretty close to being able to do that,” McKelvey said. “It’s become very competitive out there to get the top students, not just in sports but in the straight MBA programs. You have to do all you can so that cost isn’t the deciding factor for them.”

Ohio offers all its MBA students the second year tuition-free, plus a graduate assistant position that pays $8,000 to $10,000 for that academic year. First-year students each get a half scholarship, funded largely from about $150,000 a year that the program brings in through contributions, sponsorships and consulting projects.

“That keeps us competitive with the schools that we’re going up against for the best students out there,” said Jim Kahler, executive director of Ohio University’s Center of Sports Administration.

At Ohio, the 21 students who received their MBA this year all served as graduate assistants, working in the following areas:

Five in the Center for Sports Administration, working primarily on fundraising, digital marketing and recruiting.

Five in the athletic department, with three of those in fundraising.

Four in the business school and its associated centers outside of sports.

Two at the campus’s IMG College office.

One working remotely for Disney’s Wide World of Sports.

One at Digital Edge Sports, which offers website development and administration for youth sports associations and teams.

One as a campus brand manager for Russell Athletic.

One as director of the Race For a Reason annual charity run.

One as general manager of the Southern Ohio Copperheads, a college summer league baseball team that plays its games on campus.

“I don’t have the Tampa Bay Lightning in my backyard,” Kahler said. “But I have Digital Edge Sports. They fund a GA.

Andrew Busot will serve his residency with the Lightning.
Photo by: University of South Florida
IMG College funds two. That’s good experience and it brings down the cost [of the degree].”

Few sports MBA programs can put together the sort of funding packages of those offered by UMass, Ohio and now USF. It’s especially difficult to do at two well-established programs housed in big-ticket business schools: Oregon and George Washington, top 100-ranked MBA programs where the degree carries a price tag of $75,000 to $85,000. Both of those programs provide scholarships and offer graduate assistant positions that lessen the financial burden.

About one-fourth of a graduating class at Oregon typically will receive a second-year teaching assistant slot that comes with a full tuition waiver, cutting the cost of the degree in half, said Whitney Wagoner, managing director of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center, who was promoted to the position earlier this month. One female student receives an endowed scholarship annually.

“In conversations I have with the students who choose to come here, they never talk about how much it costs,” Wagoner said. “But, realistically, the financial piece can’t not be a factor. We realize that our key competitors do offer quite a bit.”

At George Washington, about 10 of 25 sports MBA students typically land a graduate assistant slot in the athletic department that covers 95 percent of their tuition, said program director Lisa Delpy Neirotti. The sports management program also brings in about $150,000 in revenue from consulting and fundraising, she said, some of which is used to fund scholarships. Students with high GMAT scores also can qualify for scholarships in the business school.

Neirotti said she has approached the Nationals about funding a residency program similar to that which USF has with the Lightning, but that the preponderance of sport management programs and business schools in the region would make it difficult for a pro team to choose to work with only one.

“What I always say to [prospective students] is, when you’re paying this much money, you are preparing yourself for something if you decide that sports is not the thing to go into,” Delpy Neirotti said. “That’s the real important message.
You may think right now that sports is where you’re at. And it may be for five years. But if that changes, you’ll be glad you have the MBA.”

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