Public vs Private Tuition: Mythbusters Edition

[TheOriginalCane]

Think the USC comparison is a good one. One other thing to note is that the phrase "falling off" is relative. Our last appearance in Omaha comes in 2016 that's not that long ago even though we missed the post season in 2017 and 2018. Consider that in the last 20+ years mid majors in Florida have had a tremendous Baseball uprising thus spreading the talent out to other places. We owned postseason baseball down here for a very long time UF has caught us in terms of recruiting and popularity. There's also the new facility arms race in baseball that we're behind in as far as modern amenities at mark light (weight room not included)

Agree completely, which is why I have argued that it was not some "one-time phenomenon" where we hit the wall.

Having said that, our recruiting battles have been getting tougher and tougher over the last couple of decades, and certain issues can then fuel other issues. For instance, as SOME recruits have chosen to take Florida state-school offers over a UM offer, it has HELPED those schools to narrow the talent gap on Miami, which then adds CREDENCE to the concept that you can do "just as well" developing at a state-school like FIU or FAU, at least as well as you could at Miami.

That's all I'm saying. We have a couple of dopey porsters who are making overly simplistic arguments as to how the tuition differential has had no impact on Miami's recruiting, and that simply IS NOT TRUE.

 

[Pentagon Cane]

Are baseball players poorer than regular students? Because we don't seem to have a shortage of applicants, thus making the University anything but "cost prohibitive".

Because a large portion of the student body comes from wealthy families from out of state.

My son's girlfriend was on academic scholarship. My son on a ROTC type-1.

Baseball is not some prep school sport like lacrosse where almost everybody who plays comes from wealthy families.

 

[Pentagon Cane]

Agree completely, which is why I have argued that it was not some "one-time phenomenon" where we hit the wall.

Having said that, our recruiting battles have been getting tougher and tougher over the last couple of decades, and certain issues can then fuel other issues. For instance, as SOME recruits have chosen to take Florida state-school offers over a UM offer, it has HELPED those schools to narrow the talent gap on Miami, which then adds CREDENCE to the concept that you can do "just as well" developing at a state-school like FIU or FAU, at least as well as you could at Miami.

That's all I'm saying. We have a couple of dopey porsters who are making overly simplistic arguments as to how the tuition differential has had no impact on Miami's recruiting, and that simply IS NOT TRUE.

Cost of education has increased 2 to 3 times the rate of inflation over the last 20 years.

I think Florida has 6 kids from out of state. 4 of the 6 are grad transfers. Getting into UF means you essentially qualify for Bright Futures. That does not mean UF baseball players qualify but tuition is $6 per year. Miami is 8 to 9 times more. Room and board is a pittance of Miami's.

 

[TheOriginalCane]

Cost of education has increased 2 to 3 times the rate of inflation over the last 20 years.

I think Florida has 6 kids from out of state. 4 of the 6 are grad transfers. Getting into UF means you essentially qualify for Bright Futures. That does not mean UF baseball players qualify but tuition is $6 per year. Miami is 8 to 9 times more. Room and board is a pittance of Miami's.

Completely true. One of my nieces is finishing her freshman year at The Gaytor. I definitely know what the pricing is.

 

[Pentagon Cane]

Completely true. One of my nieces is finishing her freshman year at The Gaytor. I definitely know what the pricing is.

His other point was we don't have a shortage of applications. So what? My daughter wanted to go to Miami. Had she received at Foote like my son she probably attends. They gave her a stipend that won't have paid for a class.

She was ****ed. Higher GPA. More AP classes. More athletic letters. She was all conference in lacrosse and cheer.

She wants to go to Miami Law school. She better figure out how to get a scholly.

 

[Pitcher in the Rye]

Stop sounding like the angry sports talk radio caller and take a deep breath.

Everything is gonna be ok.

You said Miami is at a severe competitive disadvantage regarding recruiting. I showed you the several top 5 classes they get year after year. That right there ENDS the argument.

Then I show how there’s 5 private schools in the top 12. You say but what about other years, that’s just this week… excuse after excuse. Then I say there are ways around it, and you start blabbing what everyone knows: that are there are rules for athletes regarding tuition. Again there are ways around it because you mentioned Vandy, which is hilarious because it invalidates your point.

Are you forgetting Ivy League schools don’t offer athletic scholarships? Here’s how they do it: "Ivy League schools share a tradition of academic excellence and broad-based, successful NCAA Division I athletics. The Ivy League annually finishes among the top Division I athletics conferences in national competitive rankings, and Ivy League student-athletes earn the country’s best records in the NCAA Academic Performance Ratings, operating under the Ivy League model of athletics as a significant educational component of the student's undergraduate experience.
"Ivy League schools provide financial aid to students, including athletes, only on the basis of financial need as determined by each institution’s Financial Aid Office. There are no academic or athletic scholarships in the Ivy League. A coach may assist a prospective student-athlete to obtain an estimated financial aid award, however only the Financial Aid Office has the authority to determine financial aid awards and to notify students officially of their actual or estimated awards."

Then you say the 11.7 has impacted Miami’s success the last free decades. Here are the 2 CWS championships and 8 CWS the last two decades: 1999, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2015, 2016.

Stop trying to gaslight the board and own up to the facts. And relax.

 

[Brains]

Using this week's top-25 doesn't really indicate the overall health/wealth of a program. BC just got swept and their record in conference is identical to ours. Everybody here knows about Vandy - good on them for prioritizing baseball the way they have under Corbin - but they are, pretty clearly, the outlier. Stanford who, like Vanderbilt, happens to have an endowment north of the GDP of most countries has also been really good lately with Esquer - coincidence? But neither Wake nor BC has been to Omaha this decade (or century, for that matter). They have 2 regional wins, combined, since 2016. Not exactly baseball powerhouses. Congratulations on a good half-season, but have they done enough to prove that Vandy isn't an outlier?

What about USC though? And Rice? And Tulane? Tradition-rich (private) baseball schools, lived in Omaha throughout the early 2000's, in fertile recruiting grounds, but have all become programs that struggle to make regionals. We are in a little bit better shape than those schools but are not where we were in the heyday. Did everyone just happen to hire dud after dud after dud to replace their legendary skippers? Maybe. But I tend to think there is a little more to the story.

Stanford is never a good example. That school has unlimited funds.

 

[Brains]

Abolish Bright Futures.

 

[TaylorWalls]

This is just an ignorant comment. Virginia Tech is a VIRGINIA state school. The benefit to choosing Virginia Tech over PRIVATE schools in Virginia is that the tuition at VaTech for VA residents is much lower.

As for Miami...we have to recruit kids who can go to UiF, F$U, UCF, USF, FIU, FAU, and FGCU, all of which involve a much smaller cost of attendance for Florida residents.

You missed the entire point, which is that a bunch of JAGS from Virginia and Pennsylvania beat the **** out of our Perfect Game 9.5's and 10's.

 

[TaylorWalls]

Give it a ******* rest. You are trying to make some sort of an argument that there was ONE POINT IN TIME where Miami became so much more expensive. Just stop it.

The reality is that every year that passes WIDENS the gap between private and public school tuitiions. And at a certain point, that differential EXCEEDS the amount that can be bridged with Pell Grants and other federal/state financial aid that is NOT loan-based.

When I started at UM, my undergrad tuition was $8,800 for the year (and I was on half-scholarship). My tuition at the University of Florida would have been approximately $2,000 for the year (depending on the number of credits I actually took, while Miami charges the same for 12-18 credits).

The gap has gotten a LOT wider since 1986.

Well, that's also when milk was 99 cents a gallon. Everything rises over time, including income.

If you're going to hang your hat on "we just can't get any talent 'cause of tuition", you have to explain why our roster is filled with highly-rated recruits who couldn't stay on the same field with Wake Forest.

Ligon PG 10
Ziehl PG 9.5
Rosario #7 RHP in the country
Kayfus PG 10
Cyr PG 9.5
Gonzalez PG 9.5
Morales PG 10
Pitelli PG 9


We get plenty of our targets, they just turn out to be not very good. And before you complain about "depth", our Friday night losses to Wake Forest and Virginia were 11-0 and 14-2. We put our best 10 out there on Friday nights and that's what it looks like.

 

[TaylorWalls]

Because a large portion of the student body comes from wealthy families from out of state.

My son's girlfriend was on academic scholarship. My son on a ROTC type-1.

Baseball is not some prep school sport like lacrosse where almost everybody who plays comes from wealthy families.

You would be surprised. Baseball has become a money sport. Families spend tens of thousands every year on travel ball.

 

[TaylorWalls]

His other point was we don't have a shortage of applications. So what?

If the poster is going to use the phrase "cost prohibitive", he should make sure there aren't a record number of applicants trying to attend that university. If we had a program worth playing for, people would pay the price the same way hundreds of thousands of college students take out huge loans to attend great schools. And like Pitcher keeps pointing out, we are getting a whole lot of highly rated players. We just can't do anything with them.

 

[TaylorWalls]

Ligon - #25 RHP in the country in 2021 (4.25 ERA)
Ziehl - Drafted by the Cubs (5.19 ERA)
Rosario - #7 RHP in the country in 2020 (8.51 ERA)

Sean Sullivan - Went to Northwestern out of high school, no PG ranking - (1.56 ERA)
Rhett Lowder - #167 RHP in the country in 2020 (1.84 ERA)
Josh Hartle - #2 LHP in the country in 2020 (1.94 ERA)

But "we need better players!!! Good players can't afford us!!!"

 

[TheOriginalCane]

Well, that's also when milk was 99 cents a gallon. Everything rises over time, including income.

If you're going to hang your hat on "we just can't get any talent 'cause of tuition", you have to explain why our roster is filled with highly-rated recruits who couldn't stay on the same field with Wake Forest.

Ligon PG 10
Ziehl PG 9.5
Rosario #7 RHP in the country
Kayfus PG 10
Cyr PG 9.5
Gonzalez PG 9.5
Morales PG 10
Pitelli PG 9


We get plenty of our targets, they just turn out to be not very good. And before you complain about "depth", our Friday night losses to Wake Forest and Virginia were 11-0 and 14-2. We put our best 10 out there on Friday nights and that's what it looks like.

You are the same clueless buffoon that you've ever been.

I didn't say "we just can't get any talent". Only a clown like you thinks that recruiting rankings automatically translate into outcomes. You ignore the fact that there are a lot of talented players IF YOU JUST LOOK AT RATING SERVICES, and that maybe Miami isn't getting the absolute best players, as they once did, and that we are now overly reliant on signing kids from wealthy families who can afford to pay the other 70% of Miami tuition.

Take football as an example:

2020 - 17 composite
2019 - 27 composite
2018 - 8 composite
2017 - 12 composite
2016 - 22 composite
2015 - 27 composite
2014 - 12 composite
2013 - 14 composite
2012 - 10 composite
2011 - 33 composite
2010 - 14 composite
2009 - 16 composite
2008 - 1 composite
2007 - 13 composite
2006 - 12 composite
2005 - 9 composite

Now, the reason to cite football is because you eliminate the "tuition cost" factor, as recruits get full-rides. And outside of the years when we fell out of the Top 25 due to head coaching turnover (proved out by looking at the year-before and year-after, which are always higher than the coaching-change year), you can see that we signed Top 15-17 level talent pretty consistently for 16 years, but didn't manage to have Top 15 results. Across multiple coaches, some better (Coker/Richt), some worse (Shannon/Golden/Garcia).

But what we DO know about that 16 year period is that we missed on a TOOOOON of our top targets. Sure, we got "talented" classes, or so the numbers would seem to indicate. But we could make all-star lists out of the guys we wanted BUT DID NOT GET. That's a fact.

So, no, you can't go back and just take a class ranking and expect equal output. Particularly as team size decreases (24 starters in football including kickers, 14 starters in baseball including 3 top starters and 1 reliever, 5 starters in basketball), you have a larger and larger impact that can come from 1 or 2 great players that you "could have had". And you cannot deny that if Miami lands 1 or 2 more baseball "top recruiting choice" players each year, it takes us from "pretty good" to Omaha.

So stop it with this "Perfect Game" nonsense. Even go back and look at Miami football's BEST recruiting class, and recall that we OVER-relied on Northwestern that year. And it backfired. So maybe, JUST MAYBE a team filled up with rich prep kids might not, JUST MIGHT NOT, turn into a perennial CWS team.

Shocking...no, it's completely predictable, just like your porsts...

 

[HurricanePhilly]

I honestly think we have a nice chunk of players if developed more that would be a legit core. You see flashes for short periods with some of these guys.

I also think we need to spend more time in the private school sector from VA up to Massachusetts. There is money and talent and schools like Wake, UVA, and UNC have feasted there. Schools in the Inter-Ac (a private school conference in PA) cost 50k per year.

BTW Rosario drives us all mad. But watch when he gets drafted this year much higher than most would expect. When he gets pro coaching and they tinker with pitch design, and finger placement he could become a steal. They will tighten up some things and likely add/work on his four-seamer. It would not shock me if he went in the top 5 rounds.

 

[TaylorWalls]

You are the same clueless buffoon that you've ever been.

I didn't say "we just can't get any talent". Only a clown like you thinks that recruiting rankings automatically translate into outcomes. You ignore the fact that there are a lot of talented players IF YOU JUST LOOK AT RATING SERVICES, and that maybe Miami isn't getting the absolute best players, as they once did, and that we are now overly reliant on signing kids from wealthy families who can afford to pay the other 70% of Miami tuition.

Take football as an example:

2020 - 17 composite
2019 - 27 composite
2018 - 8 composite
2017 - 12 composite
2016 - 22 composite
2015 - 27 composite
2014 - 12 composite
2013 - 14 composite
2012 - 10 composite
2011 - 33 composite
2010 - 14 composite
2009 - 16 composite
2008 - 1 composite
2007 - 13 composite
2006 - 12 composite
2005 - 9 composite

Now, the reason to cite football is because you eliminate the "tuition cost" factor, as recruits get full-rides. And outside of the years when we fell out of the Top 25 due to head coaching turnover (proved out by looking at the year-before and year-after, which are always higher than the coaching-change year), you can see that we signed Top 15-17 level talent pretty consistently for 16 years, but didn't manage to have Top 15 results. Across multiple coaches, some better (Coker/Richt), some worse (Shannon/Golden/Garcia).

But what we DO know about that 16 year period is that we missed on a TOOOOON of our top targets. Sure, we got "talented" classes, or so the numbers would seem to indicate. But we could make all-star lists out of the guys we wanted BUT DID NOT GET. That's a fact.

So, no, you can't go back and just take a class ranking and expect equal output. Particularly as team size decreases (24 starters in football including kickers, 14 starters in baseball including 3 top starters and 1 reliever, 5 starters in basketball), you have a larger and larger impact that can come from 1 or 2 great players that you "could have had". And you cannot deny that if Miami lands 1 or 2 more baseball "top recruiting choice" players each year, it takes us from "pretty good" to Omaha.

So stop it with this "Perfect Game" nonsense. Even go back and look at Miami football's BEST recruiting class, and recall that we OVER-relied on Northwestern that year. And it backfired. So maybe, JUST MAYBE a team filled up with rich prep kids might not, JUST MIGHT NOT, turn into a perennial CWS team.

Shocking...no, it's completely predictable, just like your porsts...

So you agree that Gino isn't doing enough to find the right players. He relies too much on PG rankings. Gee, where have I heard that before.

The problem STILL isn't that we can't get good players. We get extremely talented players. We just get the wrong ones because our recruiting is lazy. It is all pure speculation - based on nothing - that we're targeting the players that would get us to Omaha, but they just can't afford it.

 

[TaylorWalls]

I honestly think we have a nice chunk of players if developed more that would be a legit core. You see flashes for short periods with some of these guys.

I also think we need to spend more time in the private school sector from VA up to Massachusetts. There is money and talent and schools like Wake, UVA, and UNC have feasted there. Schools in the Inter-Ac (a private school conference in PA) cost 50k per year.

Truth. There are 425,000 high school baseball players in America. We could find 12 non-poverty-stricken kids each year if we would recruit more than just in Fort Myers and Jupiter.

 

[Ajcane8]

If the poster is going to use the phrase "cost prohibitive", he should make sure there aren't a record number of applicants trying to attend that university. If we had a program worth playing for, people would pay the price the same way hundreds of thousands of college students take out huge loans to attend great schools. And like Pitcher keeps pointing out, we are getting a whole lot of highly rated players. We just can't do anything with them.

Have we ever been short on ("general student") applicants? Our school is located in a literal paradise and offers a top-tier-lite, upper-quartile education (well, used to, anyway). No surprise that "record numbers" of applicants are trying to get in. But to just wholly ignore tuition costs as a barrier/obstacle to most admitted students (let alone baseball players) is bizarre.

Either way, that's beside the point. That point being, as prices continue to increase, the pool of Miami-quality baseball players who can afford Miami [through whatever means] is, more likely than not (again, I don't have the exact demographic numbers, but just using common sense and taking "baseball players" as a reasonable representative of the population as a whole), shrinking. And that's before you take into account the fact that other schools (who are tenfold cheaper to attend) are also going after the same limited pool. You seem to think that if Sully and Gino just did a freaky-Friday swap in 2012, we'd be the team that has won 25/30 and have a new flag flying above the press box. I wish I could agree with you.

Nice 30 game run by Wake notwithstanding, private schools (without the asterisk of seemingly unlimited funds) just can't compete in the same manner as the massive ACC/SEC schools. It's blatantly obvious. Ultimately, that boils down to the staff you can hire, the support numbers around that staff, the facilities, etc. - all areas where we (and, I'm assuming, Rice and USC) are lacking as compared to Florida (Texas and UCLA).

 

[TaylorWalls]

Have we ever been short on ("general student") applicants? Our school is located in a literal paradise and offers a top-tier-lite, upper-quartile education (well, used to, anyway). No surprise that "record numbers" of applicants are trying to get in. But to just wholly ignore tuition costs as a barrier/obstacle to most admitted students (let alone baseball players) is bizarre.

Either way, that's beside the point. That point being, as prices continue to increase, the pool of Miami-quality baseball players who can afford Miami [through whatever means] is, more likely than not (again, I don't have the exact demographic numbers, but just using common sense and taking "baseball players" as a reasonable representative of the population as a whole), shrinking. And that's before you take into account the fact that other schools (who are tenfold cheaper to attend) are also going after the same limited pool. You seem to think that if Sully and Gino just did a freaky-Friday swap in 2012, we'd be the team that has won 25/30 and have a new flag flying above the press box. I wish I could agree with you.

Nice 30 game run by Wake notwithstanding, private schools (without the asterisk of seemingly unlimited funds) just can't compete in the same manner as the massive ACC/SEC schools. It's blatantly obvious. Ultimately, that boils down to the staff you can hire, the support numbers around that staff, the facilities, etc. - all areas where we (and, I'm assuming, Rice and USC) are lacking as compared to Florida (Texas and UCLA).

Again, students (or athletes) and their families are more than happy to take on debt if the destination is worth it. Tuition is certainly an obstacle if the program you're talking about is a non-factor.

In any event, we continue to ignore the fact that three highly recruited, highly rated rotation arms have a collective ERA of 5.87.

 

[Pentagon Cane]

I honestly think we have a nice chunk of players if developed more that would be a legit core. You see flashes for short periods with some of these guys.

I also think we need to spend more time in the private school sector from VA up to Massachusetts. There is money and talent and schools like Wake, UVA, and UNC have feasted there. Schools in the Inter-Ac (a private school conference in PA) cost 50k per year.

BTW Rosario drives us all mad. But watch when he gets drafted this year much higher than most would expect. When he gets pro coaching and they tinker with pitch design, and finger placement he could become a steal. They will tighten up some things and likely add/work on his four-seamer. It would not shock me if he went in the top 5 rounds.

He never gets past High A. Some of his problem is in his head, but when Rosario misses it is usually over the plate and he misses a lot. McFarlane went in the 25th round and he had much better stuff than Rosario. I just don't see it with Rosario.