Update/responsibilites

Colleagues - this is really good stuff. I apologize for not jumping on this sooner. If you can believe it, the power cord to my laptop spazzed out and caught fire, right in my lap. Crazy. Gotta love the smell of Napalm (or burning electricals) in the morning!

Anyhow, onto my secondary computer.

OK - Aaron, I see your point re: qualitative, but I'm concerned about extending our data (#2) beyond the timeline of our application. I really think the KISS principle - keep it simple - is the best way to go for now. What I mean, is that #1 is straightforward and Kyle's post gives a very useful and good detail of separation within #1 by gender (and possibly sport); you can find that in Welch's data. #2 and #4 would be the next steps; Troy would prefer not doing #4 because of his current responsibilites. Therefore, #1 and/or #2 at this point.

So, again, our research question(s) would be:
1. "What percentage of the cost of attendance does an athletic scholarship cover?"

2 (possible - Aaron's lead with qualitative). One other potential question could be: "How much financial aid do colleges award on the basis of athletic talent?" -- with "talent" being the operative word here to tackle.

Kyle - you bring up some real good insight on this, and if you have access I'd say the more the merrier. Please proceed on the data mining. Just throw what you have out there by the 15th -- the wider view of where your data are going -- and let us see what sticks. Breaking the data down by gender and then finding potential total athletic aid is really useful. I anticipate Welch was going in the same direction. Maybe you two can take different sides of the data (North vs South/East vs West/D1 vs D2)???? I leave it to you two.... PS: Can you do lunch or (better for my schedule) drinks in the next week?

Welch - thanks for putting up the descriptives. I find the 99% of the D3 schools with 999,000 in athletic aid interesting and obviously an outlier -- which school(s) is this and why? Thanks for all the other info up there separating the variables. Kyle claims this can be separated by team as well... do you have this? I thought what we discussed down at your office you couldn't get it by team. Maybe Kyle has access to more specific data -- if so, do you want to investigate this, Kyle? Or, are we getting too far from the original research question? Maybe we want to keep it by school/gender/ and then separate by region/conference/division... Can we do it by sport, Kyle?

We also need to find the cost of attendance, via IPEDS? That is something we need to get to

Graduate rate data Look here: http://www.ncaa.org/grad_rates/

Scholarship data look here:
http://www.campuschamps.com/rulebook/ncaa_scholarship_limits.shtml

or

http://www.educationplanner.com/education_planner/paying_article.asp?sponsor=2859&articleName=NCAA_Scholarship_Limits

Therefore, I propose this:

Welch and Kyle - methodology and data
Troy - literature review #1
Scott/Aaron - lit review/theoretical framework #1
Aaron - lit review/methodology #2/theo framework #2 (if Aaron decides to proceed on this)
Jennifer - (haven't heard from her) - lit review #1

Please provide some data/writeup by April 15. Anything you have would be a good start. I can pull it together in a roughdraft by April 20. Then, more extensive analysis by April 25 for the next iteration.

Let me know your thoughts. Thanks for your patience!

Scott