Future of Division III

[awadelewis]

Iowa Wesleyan had been hanging on by its fingernails for ages. I'm actually pretty surprised that it made through the Covid shutdown.

IW survived by using a rural infrastructure loan program to keep afloat.   Cost of interest on that loan was one of the reasons that the state government used to justify not allocating COVID money to them.   And now the USDA ends up owning a college campus in Iowa.

The D-I mess at B-SC was part of a larger foo-bar by their administration at the time that flushed the endowment to fund that athletics change and a bunch of other changes on their campus.   Combine that with some serious mismanagement over the years with things like financial aid and you see the mess they have today.    And they have few friends in our Legislature here in Alabama.   Hope for the best but I'm not very confident in a good outcome.   Lots of good commentary over on the SAA football board about the situation.

The comments on St. Francis dropping their athletic programs rather than going D3 are interesting.    The NCAA's D3 Revenue and Expenses Report for 2011-2015 (http://www.ncaapublications.com/productdownloads/D32015RevExp.pdf reported that the median total expenses for programs in the division was $3M in 2015.    That's a hefty chunk of change for an institution, particularly if they're tuition dependent.    There is more recent data in this presentation:  https://ncaaorg.s3.amazonaws.com/research/Finances/2021RES_D3-RevExpReport.pdf

[Ralph Turner]

Iowa Wesleyan had been hanging on by its fingernails for ages. I'm actually pretty surprised that it made through the Covid shutdown.

IW survived by using a rural infrastructure loan program to keep afloat.   Cost of interest on that loan was one of the reasons that the state government used to justify not allocating COVID money to them.   And now the USDA ends up owning a college campus in Iowa.

The D-I mess at B-SC was part of a larger foo-bar by their administration at the time that flushed the endowment to fund that athletics change and a bunch of other changes on their campus.   Combine that with some serious mismanagement over the years with things like financial aid and you see the mess they have today.    And they have few friends in our Legislature here in Alabama.   Hope for the best but I'm not very confident in a good outcome.   Lots of good commentary over on the SAA football board about the situation.

The comments on St. Francis dropping their athletic programs rather than going D3 are interesting.    The NCAA's D3 Revenue and Expenses Report for 2011-2015 (http://www.ncaapublications.com/productdownloads/D32015RevExp.pdf reported that the median total expenses for programs in the division was $3M in 2015.    That's a hefty chunk of change for an institution, particularly if they're tuition dependent.    There is more recent data in this presentation:  https://ncaaorg.s3.amazonaws.com/research/Finances/2021RES_D3-RevExpReport.pdf

awadelewis, thanks for the NCAA report on the expenses of football. I do need help in interpreting the data on "slide #6". I try to subtract the numbers to reach the net generated revenue and they do not agree. Do the "total revenues" consider that a student athlete might not attend the college if they did not have football? Might we extend those calculations to other sports? Is it nihilistic to deduce that colleges should just consider athletic programs a waste of money?

[Gray Fox]

 "Is it nihilistic to deduce that colleges should just consider athletic programs a waste of money?"

If money is the key to evaluating everything, then people would only consider marrying only the richest person they know without regarding personality, potential as a good parent, beauty, or any other qualities.  Not everybody want to go to a school like Reed.

[jknezek]

Might we extend those calculations to other sports? Is it nihilistic to deduce that colleges should just consider athletic programs a waste of money?

Not a waste of money, but possibly an expense of recruitment. We have facilities wars all the time in higher education. Not just better classrooms and labs and information infrastructure, but better dorms and certainly better athletic facilities. When I went to W&L, the dorms weren't air conditioned. It was hardly necessary, the lower Shenandoah Valley wasn't that hot September through June, but it was something that was brought up time and again as I was a campus tour guide my junior and senior years. Eventually the money had to be spent, because W&L was falling behind.

The same goes for sports in a lot of ways. Not so much the spectator side in D3, but the athlete side. If you are competing for a student with 5 other similar schools, and you are among 2 that aren't offering soccer, and the athlete wants to play, you and that other school are likely to lose. In the past, maybe that was ok, because there were 10 more behind that student, but it's becoming a lot more competitive now. And for a see of similar, smaller liberal arts schools, the type of schools that populate a lot of D3, you can't afford to not be competitive.

Whether that is suites instead of dorms, cafes instead of cafeterias, interscholastic instead of intramural sports, sophisticated science labs instead of basic classrooms, or popular technical majors versus classical education, if you fall behind, you could quickly find yourself in pretty dire straights in the near future.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

You can get a lot of good info from the DOE database, as well - they also separate data into football and non-football to get better comparative numbers.

https://ope.ed.gov/athletics/#/institution/search

[awadelewis]

It's an odd way to present that data.   I'm not certain what point the authors were trying to make presenting the data in form.

I think @jknezek has it right about the intangible benefits of athletic programs.  Look back in the threads in the SCAC and SAA boards that talked about Hendrix and Berry adding football programs and I think you'll see lots of support when @Jknezek says up-thread.  Athletics has qualitative benefits that reports like this don't capture.

awadelewis, thanks for the NCAA report on the expenses of football. I do need help in interpreting the data on "slide #6". I try to subtract the numbers to reach the net generated revenue and they do not agree. Do the "total revenues" consider that a student athlete might not attend the college if they did not have football? Might we extend those calculations to other sports? Is it nihilistic to deduce that colleges should just consider athletic programs a waste of money?

[Ron Boerger]

Article in the LA Times regarding struggles at Whittier, which has seen enrollment decline from roughly 1850 to 1200 since 2018.  Besides the numerical issues, there's apparently a leadership crisis.  Endowment for a school that size is actually decent ($120m).

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-03-30/whittier-college-hit-with-low-enrollment-financial-woes

One of the accompanying charts shows enrollment at La Verne with a similar percentage decline.

[Ralph Turner]

FYI

Trocaire College plans to acquire Medaille University starting in July

https://www.wivb.com/news/education/colleges-universities-buffalo/trocaire-college-plans-to-acquire-medaille-university-starting-in-july/

[Gray Fox]

FYI

Trocaire College plans to acquire Medaille University starting in July

https://www.wivb.com/news/education/colleges-universities-buffalo/trocaire-college-plans-to-acquire-medaille-university-starting-in-july/

I can't find any sports at Trocaire, but Medaille is in the Empire 8.

[Pat Coleman]

Trocaire is a two-year institution.

[Gray Fox]

So Tocaire will become four years?

[Kuiper]

https://twitter.com/ZayasRiley/status/1643795661056245760?s=20

"Hearing that we will find out the fate of D3 member (and baseball powerhouse) Birmingham-Southern tomorrow at 11 am CT. School is facing closure due to financial reasons. Would be a shame to lose another D3 school for this reason. People are staying optimistic."

https://www.wvtm13.com/article/future-of-birmingham-southern-still-unclear/43523016

[Kuiper]

https://twitter.com/ZayasRiley/status/1643795661056245760?s=20

"Hearing that we will find out the fate of D3 member (and baseball powerhouse) Birmingham-Southern tomorrow at 11 am CT. School is facing closure due to financial reasons. Would be a shame to lose another D3 school for this reason. People are staying optimistic."

https://www.wvtm13.com/article/future-of-birmingham-southern-still-unclear/43523016

UPDATE:  Birmingham Southern announced that they would stay open, at least for now.  Since they still haven't secured any funding, even bridge funding, I doubt anyone can feel completely secure yet about the period beyond next year.  With the college-age demographic set to drop over the next few years, they will continue to be vulnerable.

https://twitter.com/abc3340/status/1644010527880884232?s=20

"The Board of Trustees has made the informed and thoughtful decision to keep Birmingham-Southern open," said the Rev. Keith D. Thompson '83, chair of the Board. "We have been working closely with our allies in state and local government to secure bridge funding."

[Gregory Sager]

So Tocaire will become four years?

Although it's basically a junior college, Trocaire already offers three highly-specific bachelors degrees. Merging in Medaille thus expands what was already a preexisting (though limited) bachelors menu at Trocaire.

One further bit about the merger: although Trocaire will continue Mavericks athletics, the sports of men's tennis, men's swimming & diving, and women's swimming & diving will be dropped.

[Ron Boerger]

Anyone wanting to chat about the BSC situation should join us on the SAA Football board.  Today's announcement is remarkably short on details and in addition to Kuiper's observation on bridge funding shows almost no progress on the endowment front recently, as the school reported $45m months ago.