Report: Auburn athletics lobbied to save program popular with football players

Auburn's athletic department successfully lobbied to save a small undergraduate program from elimination because of concerns that its removal would prevent student-athletes from graduating, according to a new report.

The school's powerful athletics wing appealed to the university's top administrators after a curriculum review committee in 2013 voted to axe the public administration major, reports Ben Cohen of the Wall Street Journal.

More than half of the 111 students enrolled in public administration in the fall of 2013 were student-athletes, including nearly all the top stars of Auburn's football team.

Committee members reportedly felt the relatively unpopular degree added very little to the school's academic mission. Auburn administrators would eventually overrule that decision.

According to school documents, department officials expressed concern that eliminating the program would prevent many student-athletes from graduating.

"If the public administration program is eliminated, the (graduation success rate) numbers for our student-athletes will likely decline," read a December 2012 internal athletic department memo.

Documents show that athletic officials offered to use departmental funds, if necessary, to pay the program's professors and support staff.

Auburn's senior associate athletic director for academic services, Gary Waters, wrote that athletics had made "similar investments in academic programs during the last few years" in a January 2013 email, although he said those cases hadn't been publicized.

The issue attracted scorn from at least one faculty member, who worried about the athletic department's sweeping influence.

Michael Stern, chairman of Auburn's economics department, said the Tigers' athletic interests are so powerful that it operates like a "second university."

When athletic interests intersected with an academic matter, he said it would become a "different kind of process."

An Auburn spokesman said the "athletic department has not improperly influenced academic decision-making," and while the athletics department has donated money and resources to several academic programs, "public administration is not one of them."