Mark Hollis & Washington data

Colleagues

I was at the MSU Athletic Council meeting this morning, and the new Mich St athletic director, Mark Hollis, gave a presentation. He noted the NY Times series that spurred our research and said (paraphrase), "The biggest surprise to me since taking this job, which kind of blindsided me, was how many phone calls I have fielded from parents who think their student was getting a full ride scholarship and a full cost of attendance. I was a Little League coach and even I am surprised at how many parents think that pushing them a sport when they are young will help them get a scholarship. We all need to do a better job to let parents know the reality."

Further, I have done some research so far, and one interesting study that popped up was from the state of Washington. At the six public universities there, females athletic tuition scholarships are being awarded at .92 level of men's. (Eastern Washington University has demonstrated disproportionality in the awarding of aid to female athletes since 2001-02, with a proportionality ratio of .79 in 2005-06). Clearly, this demonstrates a discrepancy worthy of our investigation -- using Wash as an example, this could equate to a full ride NOT necessarily equaling cost of attendance (with the expectation that cost of attendance for a woman athlete should be the same as a male athlete); finding out this discrepancy per athlete would be useful to see how much of this is via less scholarships for women or lower awards, or whatever else we might find.

I hope to present a more detailed summary/lit review by Saturday -- this is interesting stuff, and as Kyle stated, we certainly have something here. Troy has already provided some initial lit review to me; Aaron or Jennifer, if you can provide something by Saturday, that would be helpful. If not, I'll bug you next week for content to try and fit it in...

Whether or not we can do a symposium or a roundtable has yet to be determined, but I will try to share that on Saturday.