Future of Division III

Started by Ralph Turner, October 10, 2005, 07:27:51 PM

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Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)

Quote from: smedindy on July 17, 2018, 02:59:49 PM
At CWU all students can apply for academic scholarships (and our department has teamed with Financial Aid to streamline the flow of scholarship application and approval based on criteria that usually spurs from the wishes of the donor - A Business Major with over a 3.0 who is from Clark or Lewis County, for example). I'm surprised they don't have that option in NJ. Donors can't endow scholarships at the NJ publics?

We have athletes definitely taking a partial athletics scholarship, a tuition waiver, and another scholarship to pay for college - especially for soccer, track, baseball, and softball.

They can apply for individual endowed scholarships, but the school are limited to the criteria of those scholarships.  Privates have a lot more leeway with how they distribute aid and it's tougher to be competitive.  For NJ, the merit aid is the same across the board, so I suppose the coaches could help kids apply for individual scholarships, but that's a lot of work without always a ton of payoff.  I was just saying, it's easier for a private school to offer an amount with the intention of beating out a rival, if they really want a kid.  Private schools have a little less leeway on that front.

D3 has more restrictions, obviously, but private schools can still move a little easier (or at least they have the ability to do so, pending institutional policies) than public schools do.
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justafan12

I am sure there is an NCAA rule on this but what would prevent a private D3 donor was setting up a scholarship to be given to a worthwhile athlete with a certain major with a minimum GPA.  Just curious.

smedindy

No scholarships with an athletics component, period.

justafan12

Quote from: smedindy on July 18, 2018, 04:04:19 PM
No scholarships with an athletics component, period.
I am sure D3s have some form of compliance or audit check on how they awarded private scholarships based on various factors such as race, gender, etc.  I just wonder if there is a system in place at most D3s to check to see if a high number of SA were receiving financial aid? Does the athletic department at D3 schools have to report how much financial aid their SA receive?

Just not that familiar with this and it seems like a wealthy donor and athletic department could find a way around the system to give athletic money to SA.

Just Bill

An organization (like a Kiwanis club or a Rotary club) can offer scholarships with an athletic component, that can go to a Division III athlete. The stipulations are the organization cannot designate or limit what school that student can attend, and there can be no direct connection between the organization (particularly those making the scholarship decisions) and the school.

So in your example, a wealthy donor couldn't set up that scholarship because there would be a designation that the player attend the school of the donor's preference. And there would be an established relationship between the donor and the school.

D-III schools do attempt to collect information about all financial aid their students receive and generally do a good job. That's one reason colleges request organizations send scholarship checks directly to them rather than handing them to the students. But yes, things can slip through the cracks.
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Dave 'd-mac' McHugh

Quote from: justafan12 on July 18, 2018, 05:15:39 PM
Quote from: smedindy on July 18, 2018, 04:04:19 PM
No scholarships with an athletics component, period.
I am sure D3s have some form of compliance or audit check on how they awarded private scholarships based on various factors such as race, gender, etc.  I just wonder if there is a system in place at most D3s to check to see if a high number of SA were receiving financial aid? Does the athletic department at D3 schools have to report how much financial aid their SA receive?

Just not that familiar with this and it seems like a wealthy donor and athletic department could find a way around the system to give athletic money to SA.

We've already had schools get in trouble with this... especially schools with ice hockey who set up international scholarships (in those cases it was the percentage was too high). But DIIIs have gotten in trouble with scholarships set up that ended up being informally designated for athletes. Schools are far more aware of these rules and avoid it altogether if they can.
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Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)


It's a basic percentage of variance - not sure offhand what the number is - something like there can't be more than a 3% variance between the SA population and the general population when it comes to merit-based aid.  I'm presuming they have need standards that they can show are universal when awarding need-based scholarships.
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Oline89

Quote from: Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan) on July 23, 2018, 07:02:15 AM

It's a basic percentage of variance - not sure offhand what the number is - something like there can't be more than a 3% variance between the SA population and the general population when it comes to merit-based aid.  I'm presuming they have need standards that they can show are universal when awarding need-based scholarships.

I believe that the official DIII NCAA rule is that there can be no variance between the amount of aid offered to a SA when compared to the general population of the school.  The 3% is probably a statistical number (standard deviation?)  rather than a firm percentage

Pat Coleman

It's 4% but yes. And you can't give the SA population more than 4% more ... but you can definitely give them less and I'm sure that's the case at schools.
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Bishopleftiesdad

Does that open up possibilities, that the top athlete's, may get more? Where the guys on the bottom of the roster are paying full freight, for the opportunity? That would could be another reason for large rosters.
I do not believe this is happening. It is just a thought I always had. I would think there are controls, so this would not happen.

Mr. Ypsi

Quote from: Bishopleftiesdad on July 23, 2018, 06:03:34 PM
Does that open up possibilities, that the top athlete's, may get more? Where the guys on the bottom of the roster are paying full freight, for the opportunity? That would could be another reason for large rosters.
I do not believe this is happening. It is just a thought I always had. I would think there are controls, so this would not happen.

I've long wondered the same thing.  If the emphasis is just on average scholarship money, to coaches the SAs are not 'average'.  Are the checks in place to scrutinize the financials enough that 'stars'  can't effectively get athletic scholies, compensated by 'scrubs' getting much less?

Unless the monitors are 'deep diving' to check FA, while I think MOST D3 schools would be on the up-and-up, these sorts of shenanigans could easily slip through if auditors are not extremely vigilant.

Just Bill

If you really want to sniff out the schools playing in the gray areas, you need to look at how often they "re-evaluate" their financial aid package for a potential student-athlete. The way it should work is School A and School B each sends the S-A their financial package, and then the S-A can compare and make a decision.

But many schools, perhaps at the prompting of coaches, re-evaluate a student's financial aid package and suddenly come up with additional money. Where did the extra money come from and why didn't it show up in the initial financial aid package? Good question. The schools who practice this will say, they were able to give additional money because other students turned down their own aid packages in order to attend elsewhere. And that's probably true to some extent. But it does raise red flags when School A is able to raise their financial package JUST higher than School B, or when a single S-A gets re-evaluated four or fives times, increasing the package each time.

If coaches are prompting the financial aid office for more money, that's a violation. If coaches are extracting the financial aid details of a competing offer out of a recruit and sharing that information with their financial aid office, that's a violation (or at the very least unethical and shady.) If schools are routinely re-evaluating financial aid offers for S-As but not for the general student body, that's a violation.

But these type of potential violations are entirely internal and almost impossible to make a complaint on or prove. Plus, it's in the purview of the financial aid office, which should be educated and compliant with NCAA rules, but aren't always.
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sunny

#2487
I'll add that while everything above is true, a coach can absolutely have star players with a lower discount rate than their end-of-bench kids and still be within the rules, provided they are smart with how/who they recruit. Have a lot of high-need or top academic scholarship qualifiers who are stud athletes on your radar? Fill out your second tier athletes with kids who are non-need/less-or-no academic merit (i.e. full-pay or close to it) kids. Your admissions and financial aid people will be happy with that. That's exactly how they run their institution in general and as long as you're not bending/breaking aid rules on a specific basis as mentioned above, this is perfectly fine.

I'd actually suspect that on many (if not most) rosters of expensive schools, the lower-tier athletes are paying, on average, more to attend (though probably not a tremendous gap and I am speaking completely in averages, not a case-by-case for each individual kid) ... and that that would be the case even WITHOUT any shenanigans ... simply because the schools themselves are going to want coaches to entertain/recruit potential full-pay kids, even if they'll be benchwarmers; a benchwarmer with a huge discount rate (setting aside any other factors) isn't necessarily a priority to the admissions office or the coach.

Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)

Quote from: Just Bill on July 24, 2018, 10:35:08 AM
If you really want to sniff out the schools playing in the gray areas, you need to look at how often they "re-evaluate" their financial aid package for a potential student-athlete. The way it should work is School A and School B each sends the S-A their financial package, and then the S-A can compare and make a decision.

But many schools, perhaps at the prompting of coaches, re-evaluate a student's financial aid package and suddenly come up with additional money. Where did the extra money come from and why didn't it show up in the initial financial aid package? Good question. The schools who practice this will say, they were able to give additional money because other students turned down their own aid packages in order to attend elsewhere. And that's probably true to some extent. But it does raise red flags when School A is able to raise their financial package JUST higher than School B, or when a single S-A gets re-evaluated four or fives times, increasing the package each time.

If coaches are prompting the financial aid office for more money, that's a violation. If coaches are extracting the financial aid details of a competing offer out of a recruit and sharing that information with their financial aid office, that's a violation (or at the very least unethical and shady.) If schools are routinely re-evaluating financial aid offers for S-As but not for the general student body, that's a violation.

But these type of potential violations are entirely internal and almost impossible to make a complaint on or prove. Plus, it's in the purview of the financial aid office, which should be educated and compliant with NCAA rules, but aren't always.

To be fair, this happens across the campus and not just in athletic departments.  Lots of professors ask for financial aid re-evaluations for kids they're hoping to get into their programs.  It may be less prevalent, but at schools with financial aid flexibility, it's not out of the question for all students (which is probably all the NCAA needs to see).
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Ron Boerger

#2489
DIII Championships Committee supports regional realignment

(Edit:  fixed URL)

https://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/media-center/news/diii-championships-committee-supports-regional-realignment

Besides aligning schools to reflect growth and changes in participation, this proposal could also increase the number of regions in some sports, reducing the number of schools in a region:

QuoteThe new model seeks to have roughly 40 teams in each region. Sports that have 40-149 sponsors would have two regions; sports sponsored by 150-374 schools would have five to eight regions; and sports with 375 or more sponsors would have nine to 10 regions. In tennis, additional review will take place to determine the appropriate number of regions given that selections for the individual portion of the tournament are dependent on the alignment.

In most instances, the total number of regions in each sport would increase by two, three or four. The changes will require that some national committees expand to account for new regional representatives on those committees. Also, some conferences would be moved from their current regions.