WBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

Started by wheatonc, March 03, 2005, 06:18:19 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

WUPHF

Quote from: Gregory Sager on September 08, 2018, 12:10:56 PM
North Park is a WYSIWIG private school in the same sort of way as York (PA), and I can say that without a doubt that it's dramatically more expensive than a state school. A year's tuition at NPU is $25,740, and with room & board it's $34,200. Like I said, it's WYSIWIG, so you can't expect a ton of financial aid from the school to cut into that amount, especially since what aid there is tends to go to high-need students. Right next door, just a couple of blocks west on Foster Avenue, is Northeastern Illinois University, a state school of WIAC proportions (i.e., about 7,700 undergrads). NEIU's tuition is $11,320 per year. Room and board is expensive there, since it's a commuter school with limited housing availability, but even with r&b added in the cost is still $22,744, or about two-thirds of what it costs to go to NPU down the street.

I knew people at North Park when they changed their tuition and financial aid structures.  I'll believe if you say it has changed, but at the time, the vast majority of students were on scholarship and big scholarships at that.  Tuition was slashed and scholarships were slashed accordingly.  But, the overall financial aid philosophy did not change that much.

North Park admissions refers to a $10,000 scholarship offered to two students with a 25 ACT and 3.0 GPA and a 23 ACT and 3.25 GPA.  I have to think that $10,000 scholarship is close to the average award.

RogK

I think it's just a bit suspicious that no one mentions the D3 conferences that are part of the 20,000 leagues under the sea.
Or am I all wet about that?

Enginerd

Quote from: RogK on September 10, 2018, 11:17:13 AM
I think it's just a bit suspicious that no one mentions the D3 conferences that are part of the 20,000 leagues under the sea.
Or am I all wet about that?

Wow - that just went straight over my head!

AndOne

Quote from: WUPHF on September 07, 2018, 02:54:52 PM

Quote from: Enginerd on September 07, 2018, 11:54:46 AM
Really no difference from the example within D-III of highly-regarded private colleges with successful athletic departments and gigantic endowments whom can afford to give athletes enormous aid packages (relatively-speaking) when compared to smaller liberal arts colleges that are struggling to keep the doors open. Some can and some cannot.

I think you might be surprised to the extent to which the elite private institutions are not giving out enormous financial aid packages to athletes

$ What's enormous to one school might be a pittance to another.  ;)

$ An interesting point to the question of finding dollars to offer to prospective incoming athlete-students is whether a school allows donations to be earmarmarked for a specific sport. Some schools allow this while others require all donations go to a general fund which allows the school to allocate dollars wherever they want. Let's say a very successful alum who was a swimmer wants to donate a fairly substantial amount to his or her alma mater's swimming program. However, that school might be very well known for it's football or basketball program (the so called major sports), and may consider a  return on an investment in a football or basketball player would provide the school with more visibility than a swimmer might. If that particular school was one that required all donated money go into a general fund, they could effectively include at least some of the money meant for the swimming program in an aid package offered instead to a prospective football or basketball player rather than to a swimmer. They could also use that money for a totally non athletic purpose such as funding an endowed teaching chair or paying down debt incurred in the construction of a new science building. Of course, there is the risk that this could alienate the alum/booster who might withhold or limit future donations. Other schools (I suspect the majority) will allow donations be directed to a specific program, either athletic or not. At most of those type schools I suspect the major sports get most of the donated money. But this arrangement guarantees that if money is intended for a "minor" program, that sport would indeed get the benefit of the total donated amount.
I would guess that there are benefits to both types of policies. Is the school me that has never been known as an athletic powerhouse, and never will be? If so, one star football or basketball player probably isn't going to make much of a difference, so that is more likely to be an institution requiring all monies go into a general fund. But if a school is known for football, basketball, or soccer, softball, or whatever, they probably want to keep the monetary pipeline supplying those sports with funds open. As such, they will likely allow specified donations.

Enginerd

#6739
Quote from: AndOne on September 10, 2018, 04:34:08 PM
Quote from: WUPHF on September 07, 2018, 02:54:52 PM

Quote from: Enginerd on September 07, 2018, 11:54:46 AM
Really no difference from the example within D-III of highly-regarded private colleges with successful athletic departments and gigantic endowments whom can afford to give athletes enormous aid packages (relatively-speaking) when compared to smaller liberal arts colleges that are struggling to keep the doors open. Some can and some cannot.

I think you might be surprised to the extent to which the elite private institutions are not giving out enormous financial aid packages to athletes



$ What's enormous to one school might be a pittance to another.  ;)

$ An interesting point to the question of finding dollars to offer to prospective incoming athlete-students is whether a school allows donations to be earmarmarked for a specific sport. Some schools allow this while others require all donations go to a general fund which allows the school to allocate dollars wherever they want. Let's say a very successful alum who was a swimmer wants to donate a fairly substantial amount to his or her alma mater's swimming program. However, that school might be very well known for it's football or basketball program (the so called major sports), and may consider a  return on an investment in a football or basketball player would provide the school with more visibility than a swimmer might. If that particular school was one that required all donated money go into a general fund, they could effectively include at least some of the money meant for the swimming program in an aid package offered instead to a prospective football or basketball player rather than to a swimmer. They could also use that money for a totally non athletic purpose such as funding an endowed teaching chair or paying down debt incurred in the construction of a new science building. Of course, there is the risk that this could alienate the alum/booster who might withhold or limit future donations. Other schools (I suspect the majority) will allow donations be directed to a specific program, either athletic or not. At most of those type schools I suspect the major sports get most of the donated money. But this arrangement guarantees that if money is intended for a "minor" program, that sport would indeed get the benefit of the total donated amount.
I would guess that there are benefits to both types of policies. Is the school me that has never been known as an athletic powerhouse, and never will be? If so, one star football or basketball player probably isn't going to make much of a difference, so that is more likely to be an institution requiring all monies go into a general fund. But if a school is known for football, basketball, or soccer, softball, or whatever, they probably want to keep the monetary pipeline supplying those sports with funds open. As such, they will likely allow specified donations.

I'm no D-III rules expert (but then again, no one at the NCAA is either, apparently). I think that, other than your example of the hypothetical alum's donation being dumped into a general fund for financial aid or to pay down debt for a science building, everything else is a blatant violation of D-III rules. If any school is out there using donated funds to target athletes-or targeting athletes in any way via financial aid - I REALLY hope they get caught.

RogK

Enginerd, the CCIW did have a recent multi-year case of inappropriate use of scholarships :
http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/media-center/news/elmhurst-lacked-institutional-control
A number of sports had to vacate wins, including WBB. No coaches were responsible for scholarship misuse, but they or other athletic dept personnel may not have been as vigilant as they should have been.

Enginerd

Quote from: RogK on September 10, 2018, 11:30:51 PM
Enginerd, the CCIW did have a recent multi-year case of inappropriate use of scholarships :
http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/media-center/news/elmhurst-lacked-institutional-control
A number of sports had to vacate wins, including WBB. No coaches were responsible for scholarship misuse, but they or other athletic dept personnel may not have been as vigilant as they should have been.

RogK - the elephant in the room (for D-III) is financial aid. The announcement does not specify exactly how the NCAA learned of the issue at Elmhurst - but it wouldn't be very difficult for any school that decided it wanted to step-up it's game, so to speak, and specifically target athletes that are chosen in each sport. I have to believe that the 4% threshold rule for aid can be mathematically "masked" by giving whatever is desired to an athlete identified by a coaching staff - by doing the same for 1-3 non-athletes. Every institution is different - but it would be awfully easy to violate the spirit, if technically not the letter, of the D-III financial aid rules if an institution had the endowment and was so inclined. Looking at some of the things that have come up over the years in D-III, it would appear that the NCAA really doesn't want to have to focus resources on D-III, and are not out there actually looking for wrongdoing, but once something pops up, to their credit, it is treated as seriously as though the offending school belonged to D-I.

AndOne

Quote from: RogK on September 10, 2018, 11:30:51 PM
Enginerd, the CCIW did have a recent multi-year case of inappropriate use of scholarships :
http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/media-center/news/elmhurst-lacked-institutional-control
A number of sports had to vacate wins, including WBB. No coaches were responsible for scholarship misuse, but they or other athletic dept personnel may not have been as vigilant as they should have been.

As I remember the sequence of events associated with this saga, rather than athletic dept personnel, I believe the chief transgressor was a female director of financial aid that made athletic participation on certain teams a requirement to receive scholarship money that had been earmarked for the general student body, not just athletes. I could be off a bit in my recollection of the facts, but I think that was the gist of it.

RogK

AndOne, you don't need to rely on memory, as I provided a link to the ncaa documents.
Nowhere did I say anyone in Athletics was "the chief transgressor."
I assume, however, that subsequent to the ncaa investigation, the Elmhurst Athletic dept improved something policy-wise to help prevent recurrence of those violations. I have no idea what specific changes were made, but presumably their Athletics dept is now proactive in ways it wasn't in 2014.

AndOne

Not just the Athletic Dept, but the Financial Aid office even more so.
I have known the EC AD, Paul Krohn informally for a while now, and have spoken to him quite a few times over the last several years. He has always struck me as a good guy, and someone who wouldn't intentionally bend the rules or stand for any member of his staff doing so. Again, the impression being that the problem originated in Financial Aid. However, it's a good bet that Athletics is more vigilant nowadays with regard to the manner in which, and to whom aid packages are offered.

Gregory Sager

Paul Krohn is a good guy who is universally respected throughout the CCIW. But whether or not the Elmhurst athletics staff are good people, or are vigilant, is really beside the point. I think that you guys are assuming a degree of athletic department oversight of student-athlete financial aid that really doesn't exist.

At North Park, when a coach is conversing with a prospect and his/her parents and the parents raise the subject of financial aid, the response from the coach is practically scripted: "I'm sorry, but I'm not allowed to talk about financial aid. We have a strict policy about that." The coach then refers them to the appropriate admissions officer whose job it is to handle those questions. I can't say this for certain, but I'd be surprised if other D3 schools don't have a similar hands-off policy when it comes to athletics department personnel dealing with financial-aid issues. Breaking down the wall between the athletics department and the financial aid department can lead to nothing but trouble insofar as how the athletics staff deals with student-athletes and their parents.
"To see what is in front of one's nose is a constant struggle." -- George Orwell

RogK

Excerpt from the NCAA report pp 5-6 :
"Finally, Elmhurst did not meet its obligation to control the administration of its athletics program when it failed to have in place monitoring mechanisms to detect the types of violations that
occurred in this case. The director of athletics acknowledged that he relied solely on the director of financial aid to ensure that her office performed its responsibilities pursuant to NCAA rules.
Until informed otherwise, the director of athletics assumed there were no problems with the financial aid process. Elmhurst's failure to have in place checks and balances to ensure that the
financial aid packaging process was operating in accordance with NCAA legislation also demonstrated a lack of control over the athletics program."
To me, this sounds like the NCAA wants Athletic departments to review athletes' financial aid (as another set of eyes, with no authority) so that irregularities could be detected. This seems to be the sole criticism of Mr Krohn, AndOne; no one suggests he bent any rules.

Gregory Sager

That reads very much like an ex post facto review process, not like a scenario in which the coach or AD is cognizant up-front of the amount of aid that a prospect can be offered. Of course coaches are aware of the financial-aid situation of their prospects, because the prospects (or their parents) tell them that as a part of the recruiting process ("Right now we're leaning towards School X, because they're offering us Y amount of aid."). What I'm saying is that coaches and ADs aren't allowed to encroach upon that turf as part of the recruiting process. The review process is another matter entirely.
"To see what is in front of one's nose is a constant struggle." -- George Orwell

iwu70

IWU's roster now up.

Lots of good experience coming back.  It will be interesting to see if any of the earlier pine-sitters or any of the freshmen break into Mia's playing time set-up.

My sense of the possibilities right now are:

PG -- Sam Munroe
2 -- Sosa
3 -- Anderson and Shanks
4 -- Raven Hughes
5 -- Merritt -- Brovelli

That's a very solid, talented group.  With all the others, we'll see how it all plays out . . . what Mia puts together for the '18-19 season.  Need some depth, esp. if "run and jump" continues.   I have confidence.

IWU'70

RogK