Future of Division III

[Flying Dutch Fan]

MIAA press release on an interesting approach to increasing revenue.

https://miaa.org/news/2025/8/21/miaa-launches-new-collaboration-with-brentwood-partners.aspx

The MIAA is moving to Flo Sports!  I am kidding.  Mostly.  Other conferences started with a consultants.

Bite your tongue till it bleeds please!!!  You are almost as bad as a Calvin fan

[y_jack_lok]

MIAA press release on an interesting approach to increasing revenue.

https://miaa.org/news/2025/8/21/miaa-launches-new-collaboration-with-brentwood-partners.aspx

Sounds like they're spending money in order to make money. At least with FloSports the schools (and conferences??) simply get money. At least I assume that's how it works. I hope this approach works for the MIAA. Will be interesting to see how it goes.

[Gregory Sager]

MIAA press release on an interesting approach to increasing revenue.

https://miaa.org/news/2025/8/21/miaa-launches-new-collaboration-with-brentwood-partners.aspx

The MIAA is moving to Flo Sports!  I am kidding.  Mostly.  Other conferences started with a consultants.

Bite your tongue till it bleeds please!!!  You are almost as bad as a Calvin fan

[ziggy]

MIAA press release on an interesting approach to increasing revenue.

https://miaa.org/news/2025/8/21/miaa-launches-new-collaboration-with-brentwood-partners.aspx

Sounds like they're spending money in order to make money. At least with FloSports the schools (and conferences??) simply get money. At least I assume that's how it works. I hope this approach works for the MIAA. Will be interesting to see how it goes.

Honestly, I'm not really sure what the approach is but the press release certainly contains words!

With frequent use of words like partnering/partnership ideally this deal would see the conference only be paying out of some kind of value add and that the conference can expect an ROI on this deal.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

I'm not so naive as to think it's not because of the money, I just wonder if the decades of major financial support was a no-brainer when looking for a new name (something which can be more than contentious), rather than the driver of the new name.

I do not believe you are naive.  And you may be right.  I have been trying to work it out in my head whether or not the Wesleyan in Virginia Wesleyan is a drag on recruiting.  It may well be.

Perhaps especially in the South and since VWU is actually UMC and not Wesleyan, and those two denominations seem to be moving further and further away from each other.  It's a possibility, anyway.

[CNU85]

Regent enrolls largest freshmen class

[Ron Boerger]

Regent now needs to focus equally on their retention (66% return after year one) and graduation (42% in eight years) rates.

[CNU85]

Regent now needs to focus equally on their retention (66% return after year one) and graduation (42% in eight years) rates.

Maybe they are. I wonder what the trends are for those stats. I've heard they are working hard over there with a lot of changes in play. I just don't know what those numbers look like 2-3 years ago (or longer).

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

Regent now needs to focus equally on their retention (66% return after year one) and graduation (42% in eight years) rates.

Maybe they are. I wonder what the trends are for those stats. I've heard they are working hard over there with a lot of changes in play. I just don't know what those numbers look like 2-3 years ago (or longer).

With Pat Robertson gone, they're definitely appealing to a wider base of students interested in Christian higher ed.  I know that, for sure.  They're always going to be more conservative than VWU, but I do wonder if some of that rebranding is a reaction to a more competitive recruiting environment.

[DagarmanSpartan]

Revisiting the discussion above, CWRU definitely DID NOT experience a post-Great Recession application drop off.

Over 39000 applications resulting in 1650 new students.

https://case.edu/news/get-know-cwrus-class-2029-numbers

NO demographic cliff.

[Pat Coleman]

... no cliff for Case Western Reserve does not mean no cliff, still.

[Kuiper]

... no cliff for Case Western Reserve does not mean no cliff, still.

The demographic cliff hasn't started yet (2025 is the peak year for high school graduates), but when it does it simply creates more of a buyer's market for prospective college students.  Schools that have attractive offerings in attractive places will do better, while others will do worse.

[Pat Coleman]

A reminder that we are indeed talking about 2026.

Not only do we have the 2026 enrollment cliff, but the birthrate has continued to slow.

I saw this and thought it would be relevant to the future of D3 looking out at a timeline over the next 1-2 decades. We could be going from a bad situation in 2026 to an even worse one by the mid-2030s. Have a look at the states that are seeing precipitous drops in children ages 0-4. If I were a college administrator in the states that had 5%+ declines in young children, I would be very worried about survival. Factor in that unless you are a college with a national brand, you probably aren't pulling a meaningful percentage of your students from out of state. According to a study out of the University of Wisconsin the majority of students go to college within 50 miles of where they grew up: "At public four-year colleges, the median distance students live from home is 18 miles. That number is 46 miles for private nonprofit four-year colleges, and only eight miles at public two-year colleges."



Source: https://natpop.substack.com/p/where-did-all-the-children-go?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/02/03/when-students-enroll-college-geography-matters-more-policy-makers-think

[Ron Boerger]

It's simple.

Attractive colleges and those with substantial resources get more applicants and commits.  The former is especially true because it is so easy to submit an application to multiple colleges these days.

Others don't.

And there are more unattractive/under resourced schools than not among the majority of small private schools that make up D3.