“I do think at the beginning they were all thinking that everyone would get the full stipend. When the real numbers came out that it would cost $1m to give the stipends to everyone, then the idea of a percentage came in.”
You can’t give full stipends to every partial schollie recipient because that would violate the NCAA schollie limit in each sport. If you team is limited to aggregate 10 schollies that’s all you can give out after you slice them up into pieces.
If you gave out 20 50% tuition/room/board/books schollies plus 20 full COA stipends, that adds up to more than 10 total schollies.
Stipends are outside the scholarship limits, which are only for tuition, fees, books, R&B. Most schools are already at the limits if the team is fully funded. The NCAA and some of the conferences are leaving it to the schools to decide how much the stipends can be worth. If the NCAA doesn’t care if a school gives a $2000 stipend or a $6000 one, why would it care if it gave everyone the full stipend? It pretty much said to the Power 5 that they could set the stipend amount. Some are giving more to OOS students
If you have a full scholarship student get $4000 to cover extra meals, laundry, travel, etc., and you have two 50% scholarship students who also get 50% merit scholarships, wouldn’t those two students also have a $4000/each need for personal expenses just like the 100% scholarship student? Many of the partial athletic scholarship students are just as needy as the full scholarship sports kids, and are ineligible for institutional need based aid. They still need to do their laundry.
There is going to have to be a shaking out period for sure as this moves forward. If you read the proposals on this point from last year’s NCAA meetings, including the one that passed, it seems obvious that the intention was to cover headcount sports and the requisite female equivalents. But if some of you are right and the schools are going to provide full COA to partials, then obviously the scholarship caps just got raised.
@twoinandone, I think you are talking well north of a million per year, by the way. A fully funded program has 400 ish scholarships? At 5k per that is $2,000,000 per year. Now if you start giving every partial recipient the full COA, that cost will go much higher, since far more kids are on partials than are head counts.
"wouldn’t those two students also have a $4000/each need for personal expenses just like the 100% scholarship student? "
The COA stipend is part of the scholarship and is subject to the NCAA limit.
And they’d have a much bigger unmet need for the 50% of tuition room board books that is not covered. But that doesn’t get met because they have a 50% schollie rather than 100%.
Let’s say a team has 10 schollies that today are each worth $50k. $500k total. COA increases each of those to $55k. That’s the limit – $550k.
If, in your example, you give out 20 50% schollies for TRBB. But then you give each 20 kids the full $5k COA stipend. That’s $600k total. Which is more like 11 schollies and over your $550k limit. Can’t do that.
Where does it say you can’t give everyone a full stipend? I’m not finding that restriction in the NCAA announcement of the program. If Stanford wants to give all the 300+ athletes a stipend, I think it could and that would make Stanford even more attractive to a swimmer on a 25% scholarship than it already is, because Stanford needs to attract more applicants. :-*
My daughter has a 1/3 athletic scholarship, but she (and just about everyone on the team) also has a merit scholarship, and two other grants from the school, which brings the amount pretty close to a full scholarship. We all knew this when we accepted the scholarships, and honestly, we don’t care that her tuition and costs are paid from different pots, as long as she doesn’t have any out of pocket costs. If she were eligible for a stipend (she’s not), she should get the full amount because the school figured out a way get her tuition, fees, and R&B paid by the school even though only 1/3 of an athletic scholarship.
I understand the math northwesty used, but I just don’t see a restriction on giving everyone a full stipend if that’s what the school wanted to do (and could afford to do). Stanford can afford it, Harvard and the other Ivies actually do it in that all students get their need covered up to COA, whether they have 12 men’s lacrosse players on the team getting full COA covered or 25. VaTech figured out a way to raise the COA to give a bigger stipend and they didn’t have to do that.
I really didn’t find that coaches were all that apologetic for not offering a full scholarship. They have 10 or 12 full scholarships and they are used to slicing and dicing them as they want. One coach outright told me she didn’t give scholarships to freshmen at all, and yet she recruits 10+ per year. Just not my kid!
Remember that this is Florida, so once one of these players takes a swing at you, I am pretty sure you can shoot to kill under Stand Your Ground. It worked for George!
There are some things that aren’t limited by the total number of scholarships or the percentage. Equipment is not limited. A team can supply shoes, cleats, sticks, clothing to the team. If a team has 10 scholarships but splits them among 30 players, all 30 can get cleats. The athlete who only has a 50% scholarship doesn’t just get one shoe, and doesn’t have to pay for half the cost of the pair, doesn’t get transportation to a game but not back. The stipend could be considered an ‘item’ provided to athletes, just like cleats, and it is just as true that a 50% scholarship player needs 100% of a pair of cleats as it is that a partial scholarship student needs 100% of the COA. The things provided to athletes are not cheap. I’d estimate my daughter gets about $1000 in shoes ($50), cleats ($150), stick ($100+), clothing ($500) and other things (backpack, towels, tape tape and more tape) before team costs like travel, food, medical care, uniforms are even considered. The coach does have a budget and must consider this, so even though the coach may want to split a scholarship 3 ways rather than 2, the coach has to consider other ways that 3-way split will cost the team - extra lodging costs, $1000 for individual ‘set up’, more uniforms, more food, more coaching. The stipend could be like that too, considered a cost of adding another player, another $3000 or so to the budget (although more likely a cost to the athletic department than the individual team, the AD could start reducing the size of the teams)
I can’t find it in the NCAA requirements announcements about the stipends that it is tied to the number of scholarships or any specific amount. It says that the Power 5 and any other conference that wants to can give a stipend to a scholarship athlete to cover the COA. It doesn’t instruct the conferences/schools how to determine the COA (although some federal guidelines do) or that the stipends must be given at all, who gets what, or limits. If the stipend is treated separately from the scholarship everyone could give the full amount to every athlete, just like a pair of cleats or a stick. I don’t think any school is going to give every athlete the full amount because of budgets, but I believe they could and still be in compliance.
If you are running a mens D1 lacrosse team in the power 5 conferences, your limit is 12.6 full grants-in-aid. The full COA stipend is baked into the definition of what constitutes a full grant-in-aid. If you pay out more than 12.6 stipends, then you exceed the limit of 12.6 full grants-in-aid.
A 50% kid can get both cleats, a jersey with two sleeves, and pants with two legs. They also get one full seat on the bus, just like the 100% kid does. But the 50% kid can only get 50% of the stipend, 50% of tuition, 50% of fees, 50% of books, 50% of room and board.
Question No. 1: How will equivalencies be calculated for an institution who is a member of one of the five autonomy conferences?
Answer: The grant-in-aid will be redefined as equal to student-athlete’s cost of attendance. The denominator in the equivalency calculation will be increased to the value of cost of attendance. “Other expenses related to attendance,” or the difference between cost of attendance and a current grant-in-aid (tuition and fees, room and board and required course-related books) is an element of financial aid (see NCAA Bylaw 15.2.4) and will become an element of a full grant-in-aid under the new definition. Institutions in conferences other than the five autonomy conferences should refer to Question No. 8 in this section to determine how equivalencies will be calculated.