According to an NCAA news summary, 25 Division III schools’ financial aid awards were found not acceptable and were forwarded to the NCAA’s enforcement staff. In these schools, the aid to student-athletes exceeded the aid awarded to the general student body by at least 4%, when comparing students with similar need.
The original list of schools out of the norm was 60, about 14% of Division III. Some details of the various levels of review were included in the NCAA’s piece.
That wasn’t the committee dealings the NCAA chose to emphasize, but it was what leaped off the page at me. The other big news is a proposal to put in year-round drug testing in Division III. One of the justifications was that a 2005 NCAA study put Division III drug usage at or above levels of usage in Division I. That may be true. It might also be the case that Division III student-athletes were simply more truthful in filling out the survey, since there are fewer consequences at the non-scholarship level. The testing proposal is for a two-year pilot program.
There was a list of things that the Management Council urged the Presidents Council and Executive Committee Working Group to consider:
·Further limitation on the provisional class size (one or two per year).
Not a problem. Division III is going to be too large to manage at some point.
·Tightening the standards applied to exploratory and provisional members to begin the process in lieu of the lottery system.
What a concept. Almost like I posted last August.
·Long-term divisional structure in the NCAA.
Does this sound like the late ’90s movement to subdivide Division III? Ugh.
·Optimal size of Division III based on resource allocation.
Optimal size of Division III is pretty darn close to where we are now.
·More aggressive screening of active members consistent with the Division III philosophy, membership and legislative requirements.
Sounds like more enforcement.
·Raising membership dues, if necessary, to address additional Division III resources, services and long-term membership options.
Seems reasonable.
·Changing demographics in the United States in relation to higher education.
Anyone working in higher education please chime in on this one.
Would be very interested to hear WHICH 25 schools were not acceptable – can’t really begin to imagine whether that list would include D3 powerhouses, or high cost schools or low cost state schools – very interesting…
Several of the topics mentioned here are complex and long ranging issues. Capping membership in DIII is very tricky, with compelling arguments on both sides of the concept. The method to get into DIII is already a long one and still colleges like what DIII offers in its purest incantation–a true celebration of the student-athlete. Keeping athletes involved as members of the life of a campus community is unique to DIII and is attractive to those schools who don’t wish to have a separate group of hired guns representing them.
The changes in demographics in higher education are multiple. The average age of students has gone up and many programs (particularly in teacher preparation) now require more than a four year college experience. More off-campus and non-traditional types of learning experience may have impact on current expectations on which eligibility rules are based. Since DIII should reflect what is happening on college campuses, these areas become important to providing the optimal experience for student-athletes. There is also the “haves vs. have nots” gap that is widening every day. The Chronicle of Higher Education recently had a cover story featuring the differences between Grinnell and Clarke, who are separated by less than 100 miles, but over a billion dollars in endowment. This type of reality will keep the sub-division debate alive for the foreseeable future.
DIII will face some tremendous challenges to keep ahead of the curve in the coming years. The membership will need to keep focused on long range planning to keep the division running efficiently.
With my experience with a low cost state college I doubt they are the ones providing unacceptable aid. I have read reports indicating that state college and university students leave college with more loan debt than students leaving private institutions. Both my niece and her husband graduated from Houghton College which costs twice as much per semester as NJCU and they left with much less loan debt than my wife and I did from NJCU.
On an interesting side note, my nephew applied for the assistant AD job at Centenary. He also applied for assistant and head track and cross country coaching positions with several D-I, D-II, D-III and NAIA jobs. He said that when he was interviewed and received the information about the teams and athletes the GPA of the D-I schools was about 1.0 lower than the D-III and NAIA schools and that the D-II schools were in the middle. This is including schools like Rutgers, Stanford, Duke and a couple of Ivies.
Well, state schools might be on the list, if only because it would be easier for a low-cost school to exceed the 4% variance range. It’s easier to be off by more than 4% of a low amount than it is of a high amount. But I also wonder if those cases might have been ones the NCAA let slide in the review process.
Pat, does this mean, e.g., that the dreaded “Leadership Scholarship” often awarded to, say, a QB with a rifle arm just might be a thing of the past? 🙂
The trick would be to catch a “high dollar” small school in the act. Nobody, unless they have more money than they know what to do with, ever pays full tuition in those places. If you’re qualified for admission you’re usually qualified for several scholarships/grants that put the actual price tag in the State School range; sometimes even less.
The question then becomes: Have the high dollar small schools bent their own admission rules to get athletes in that might not otherwise qualify ?? How then do you prove it and would there be anything wrong with it ?? A certain GPA, or standing in your high school class, is implied but never actually spelled out in most cases. Which leaves the school, and the school alone, to determine who is let in and who is not. That’s how it should be any way.
With only 25 DIIIs in violation out of nearly 400 that’s not even enough to worry about in my opinion. Which is why I never cared for the new rule to begin with. It’s not/wasn’t a problem, don’t make it one just for the sake of making it one. Now if 25% of DIII was in the wrong then it would be different, but it’s not.
That doesn’t mean that it wasn’t an effective deterrent, however. The rule was proposed, voted on, then put into effect. Only awards made since then are being looked at, so it’s possible that 25% of Division III was out of compliance before.
Whatever the truth might be, there are persisting stories that a goodly number of D3 venues — some “elite,” some light years away from such — are engaged in financial-aid fiddles. Some of these accounts are doubtless anecdotal or “sour-grapes” reactions or just plain mistaken. However, others stem from apparently reliable sources, including coaches,SIDs,ADs,administrators,and admissions and financial-aid folks.
Per Pat’s response above: A “possible” 25% of D3 institutions “out of compliance” at one time could be seen as a significant number.