Just for fun, I compared all 15 ACC schools to see how many scholarships each of them awarded. While the ACC is an "all-sports" conference, that doesn't mean that every school fields a team in every sport. The differences among member schools were eye-opening for me.

ACC schools ranged from a high of 346 scholarships awarded to a low of 220. To put that in context, the maximum number of scholarships any D-I school could award, if they fielded a team in every sport sanctioned by the NCAA, is 440. At a minimum, every D-I school must award at least 200.

My curiosity piqued, I then determined the "cost of attendance" for each school. To compare apples to apples as much as possible, I used out of state rates for the public schools, because many, if not most, of their scholarship athletes are likely to be from other states. And even if they aren't, the sponsoring state is subsidizing the in-state students, so ultimately it's all coming out of the taxpayers' pockets anyway.

Multiplying the two measures, I calculated the total cost of providing scholarships for each school. The range of these costs was even broader than for the number of scholarships. The lowest was $9.4 million per year, while the highest was a staggering $21.2 million. I'm pretty sure there is at least one other school in D-I with a higher number (Stanford) but I doubt there are more than two or three that are higher than our highest.

So far, I haven't identified any individual school's numbers. I thought it would be interesting to see how readers would guess how the schools would rank before I "show my work". Who do you think spends the most? The least?

My last donation reminder stated "Last year you helped to insure that the scholarship bill for our 500 student athletes was paid". I find that interesting since you said the maximum for every sport was 440. Clearly not all 500 athletes are on scholarship but it's still more than the maximum you stated and we don't field every sport.

(04-09-2014 10:47 AM)ChrisLords Wrote:  My last donation reminder stated "Last year you helped to insure that the scholarship bill for our 500 student athletes was paid". I find that interesting since you said the maximum for every sport was 440. Clearly not all 500 athletes are on scholarship but it's still more than the maximum you stated and we don't field every sport.

There may be 500 on scholarship.
Many of the non-revenue sports give partial scholarships, not so much to cover tuition but to allow all of the swimmers, for example, to eat at the University sponsored training table. It helps control the athletes diet and at a state supported school could actually be worth more than the tuition.
Baseball for instance can only give 11.7 scholarships, swimming & diving 9.9 and tennis 4.5. It would not be unusual for members of these teams to receive a 1/4 or 1/2 scholarship.
Thus there could actually be 500 scholarship athletes.

My guess is that FSU and North Carolina have the most scholarships, Wake Forest the least.

Duke and ND have the highest tuition, along with Wake?

( I wanted to respond so you will provide the rest of your data). :)

(04-09-2014 12:08 PM)XLance Wrote:  

(04-09-2014 10:47 AM)ChrisLords Wrote:  My last donation reminder stated "Last year you helped to insure that the scholarship bill for our 500 student athletes was paid". I find that interesting since you said the maximum for every sport was 440. Clearly not all 500 athletes are on scholarship but it's still more than the maximum you stated and we don't field every sport.

There may be 500 on scholarship.
Many of the non-revenue sports give partial scholarships, not so much to cover tuition but to allow all of the swimmers, for example, to eat at the University sponsored training table. It helps control the athletes diet and at a state supported school could actually be worth more than the tuition.
Baseball for instance can only give 11.7 scholarships, swimming & diving 9.9 and tennis 4.5. It would not be unusual for members of these teams to receive a 1/4 or 1/2 scholarship.
Thus there could actually be 500 scholarship athletes.

The NCAA requires that any DI baseball player receiving financial aid has to receive at least 1/3rd of a scholarship.

(04-09-2014 12:08 PM)XLance Wrote:  

(04-09-2014 10:47 AM)ChrisLords Wrote:  My last donation reminder stated "Last year you helped to insure that the scholarship bill for our 500 student athletes was paid". I find that interesting since you said the maximum for every sport was 440. Clearly not all 500 athletes are on scholarship but it's still more than the maximum you stated and we don't field every sport.

There may be 500 on scholarship.
Many of the non-revenue sports give partial scholarships, not so much to cover tuition but to allow all of the swimmers, for example, to eat at the University sponsored training table. It helps control the athletes diet and at a state supported school could actually be worth more than the tuition.
Baseball for instance can only give 11.7 scholarships, swimming & diving 9.9 and tennis 4.5. It would not be unusual for members of these teams to receive a 1/4 or 1/2 scholarship.
Thus there could actually be 500 scholarship athletes.

Scholarship rules differ by sport. For men, there are two "headcount" sports, meaning scholarships may not be used to increase the number of athletes receiving them. These are football and basketball. All others can be shared among two or three different players.

Women have six such sports. There seems to be no rhyme or reason why they chose these particular sports, but they are: Basketball, Tennis, Volleyball, Gymnastics, Rugby and Sand (beach) volleyball.

(04-09-2014 01:31 PM)TerryD Wrote:  My guess is that FSU and North Carolina have the most scholarships, Wake Forest the least.

Duke and ND have the highest tuition, along with Wake?

( I wanted to respond do you will provide the rest of your data). :)

The schools who give the most scholarships, in descending order, are: Boston College, UNC, Virginia, Duke and Louisville.

The fewest scholarships, in order of least to most, are: Georgia Tech, Miami, Wake Forest, Clemson and Florida State.

Due to differences in tuition, the list changes a little when considering how much money each school spends on scholarships. The most? Again, Boston College, this time followed by Duke, Notre Dame, Virginia and Syracuse.

Georgia Tech spends the least, followed closely by Florida State, Virginia Tech, NC State and Clemson.

What puts BC over the top is that they award scholarships in two sports not sponsored by the ACC: Ice hockey and Skiing (go figure).

While Louisville has a lot of sports, their cost of attendance is the lowest in the league.

While I was at it, I calculated a couple of ratios. These are a little less surprising, at least to me. First, I calculated the number of scholarship athletes per 1,000 undergraduates at each school. Duke had the most (48.4) followed by Wake (47.0), BC (38.1) and Notre Dame (35.0). The fewest were at Florida State (7.6), followed by NC State (10.5), Virginia Tech (10.9) and Clemson (13.8).

And finally, I tried to answer the questions "which are the football schools" and "which are the basketball schools" by calculating the ratio of average football attendance to average hoops attendance. High ratio = football school, low = basketball school. No big surprises. Football schools are Va Tech (10.6), Clemson (10.5), FSU (10.0), Notre Dame (9.8) and Boston College (8.7).

The basketball schools are Syracuse (1.7), Louisville, (2.3), UNC (2.6), Wake (3.0) and Duke (3.0).

Don't shoot the messenger.

(04-09-2014 01:31 PM)TerryD Wrote:  My guess is that FSU and North Carolina have the most scholarships, Wake Forest the least.

Duke and ND have the highest tuition, along with Wake?

( I wanted to respond do you will provide the rest of your data). :)

TerryD, tuition at Dook and Wake Forest are about the same (both are north of $60,000 per year).

I would expect the private schools to spend the most dollars on scholarships and that bears out except for UVA spending more than Cuse but then UVA has a ton of sports.

VT and BC's football/basketball ratio is inflated by the fact that they were both god awful in basketball the last 3 years. I'm sure that has driven basketball attendance down. I'm a little surprised by how low Louisville's ratio is but then they host a ton of people in the Yum center, same as Cuse in basketball.

"number of scholarship athletes per 1,000 undergraduates ay each school" just tells you who the big public schools are. Yeah you're going to have a lower number when you have 30,000 undergraduates.

I can't speak for Georgia Tech, Florida State, NC State and Clemson but VT's scholarship cost burden is so low because tuition is still under 10K a semester in-state.

(04-09-2014 04:18 PM)XLance Wrote:  

(04-09-2014 01:31 PM)TerryD Wrote:  My guess is that FSU and North Carolina have the most scholarships, Wake Forest the least.

Duke and ND have the highest tuition, along with Wake?

( I wanted to respond do you will provide the rest of your data). :)

TerryD, tuition at Dook and Wake Forest are about the same (both are north of $60,000 per year).

Miami and BC are in the mix also, with Syracuse not too far behind.

"Undergraduate tuition at the University of Notre Dame will increase 3.8 percent for the 2013-14 academic year to $44,605. The rate of increase matches that of the previous three years, which was the lowest since 1960. With average room and board rates of $12,512, total student charges will be $57,117."

http://news.nd.edu/news/37430-notre-dame...s-years-3/


ND has 11,931 students (8,453 undergraduates and 3,478 graduate and professional students) from all 50 states and 70 other countries.


http://admissions.nd.edu/hs-counselors/n...e-numbers/

ND claims to have 26 varsity sports and over 700 student-athletes on page 2 of its 2010-11 annual report.


http://www.und.com/ot/ath-annual-report.html

Regarding athletic scholarships:

"the athletic department completed a four-year plan to provide all 26 varsity sports with the maximum number of scholarships permitted under NCAA regulations. The plan was completed in 2004-05. Among other goals, this plan added 36 additional scholarships to Notre Dame women's varsity programs."

"Second, although several women's programs are fully-funded by the University for several years, the number of scholarships actually awarded is at the coach's discretion. During 2012-13 women's programs used 123.5 of 136 scholarships allotted to their programs."

http://www.und.com/ot/eada-report-12.html

ND's 20102-13 EADA report lists 901 "participants" and has a table breaking them down by sport.

http://grfx.cstv.com/photos/schools/nd/g...report.pdf

These are obviously not scholarship totals as the football team lists 107 "participants".

I could not find the current information as to the total number of scholarship athletes at ND.

In 2001, ND awarded 256 athletic scholarships.

http://www.und.com/genrel/122100aaa.html

ND athletics had total revenues (2012-13) of $108,509,683 and total expenses of $88,846,780 for a profit of $19,662,903.

(04-09-2014 05:44 PM)TerryD Wrote:  "Undergraduate tuition at the University of Notre Dame will increase 3.8 percent for the 2013-14 academic year to $44,605. The rate of increase matches that of the previous three years, which was the lowest since 1960. With average room and board rates of $12,512, total student charges will be $57,117."

http://news.nd.edu/news/37430-notre-dame...s-years-3/


ND has 11,931 students (8,453 undergraduates and 3,478 graduate and professional students) from all 50 states and 70 other countries.


http://admissions.nd.edu/hs-counselors/n...e-numbers/

ND claims to have 26 varsity sports and over 700 student-athletes on page 2 of its 2010-11 annual report.


http://www.und.com/ot/ath-annual-report.html

Regarding athletic scholarships:

"the athletic department completed a four-year plan to provide all 26 varsity sports with the maximum number of scholarships permitted under NCAA regulations. The plan was completed in 2004-05. Among other goals, this plan added 36 additional scholarships to Notre Dame women's varsity programs."

"Second, although several women's programs are fully-funded by the University for several years, the number of scholarships actually awarded is at the coach's discretion. During 2012-13 women's programs used 123.5 of 136 scholarships allotted to their programs."

http://www.und.com/ot/eada-report-12.html

ND's 20102-13 EADA report lists 901 "participants" and has a table breaking them down by sport.

http://grfx.cstv.com/photos/schools/nd/g...report.pdf

These are obviously not scholarship totals as the football team lists 107 "participants".

I could not find the current information as to the total number of scholarship athletes at ND.

In 2001, ND awarded 256 athletic scholarships.

http://www.und.com/genrel/122100aaa.html

ND athletics had total revenues (2012-13) of $108,509,683 and total expenses of $88,846,780 for a profit of $19,662,903.

Ferreting out some of this data is harder than it sounds. Individual schools' web sites vary greatly as to how many sports they offer. ND, for example, seems to say they have 21 sports, but you have to dig deeper. For most sports, when there is both a men's team and women's, the Irish generally list each separately preceded by an M or a W as appropriate. However, for Track and Field, they don't indicate a women's team, but they have one.

Another issue is how to count track. Some schools list track and cross country as two different sports, but the NCAA seems to consider them as one sport with multiple seasons. Indeed, some schools' websites list indoor track and outdoor track as if they were separate sports (maybe to make it look like they have a bigger athletic program if they are self conscious about how few teams they sponsor).

There are actually 35 sports that the NCAA lists scholarship limits, some of which are very regional in nature (like skiing, water polo, beach volleyball, etc).

We shouldn't get too hung up on details of this data (as you point out, at any given time, not all allowed scholarships are fully subscribed. There's no way to find this out in the public record, but I doubt it would alter our impressions very much). The big picture, IMO, is more interesting. I am frankly very surprised at BC's athletic commitment, especially given their high tuition costs.

When you think about athletic budgets, I don't think most people would guess that BC pays more than double what Clemson does for scholarships. When you add that difference to dramatically lower football gate receipts, plus higher travel costs due to their remote location relative to the rest of the conference, they are at a considerable disadvantage. Makes you wonder how they did it before the ACC started to earn the higher current TV revenues.

(04-09-2014 05:44 PM)TerryD Wrote:  "Undergraduate tuition at the University of Notre Dame will increase 3.8 percent for the 2013-14 academic year to $44,605. The rate of increase matches that of the previous three years, which was the lowest since 1960. With average room and board rates of $12,512, total student charges will be $57,117."

http://news.nd.edu/news/37430-notre-dame...s-years-3/


ND has 11,931 students (8,453 undergraduates and 3,478 graduate and professional students) from all 50 states and 70 other countries.


http://admissions.nd.edu/hs-counselors/n...e-numbers/

ND claims to have 26 varsity sports and over 700 student-athletes on page 2 of its 2010-11 annual report.


http://www.und.com/ot/ath-annual-report.html

Regarding athletic scholarships:

"the athletic department completed a four-year plan to provide all 26 varsity sports with the maximum number of scholarships permitted under NCAA regulations. The plan was completed in 2004-05. Among other goals, this plan added 36 additional scholarships to Notre Dame women's varsity programs."

"Second, although several women's programs are fully-funded by the University for several years, the number of scholarships actually awarded is at the coach's discretion. During 2012-13 women's programs used 123.5 of 136 scholarships allotted to their programs."

http://www.und.com/ot/eada-report-12.html

ND's 20102-13 EADA report lists 901 "participants" and has a table breaking them down by sport.

http://grfx.cstv.com/photos/schools/nd/g...report.pdf

These are obviously not scholarship totals as the football team lists 107 "participants".

I could not find the current information as to the total number of scholarship athletes at ND.

In 2001, ND awarded 256 athletic scholarships.

http://www.und.com/genrel/122100aaa.html

ND athletics had total revenues (2012-13) of $108,509,683 and total expenses of $88,846,780 for a profit of $19,662,903.

Terry, according to what I could glean, ND currently offers 312.7 scholarships in total - 181.7 for men and 131 for women.

BC offers 173.6 for men and 173 for women, for a total of 346.6.

I expected Stanford to be at the top of the list, and they seem to be, but not by as wide a margin as I expected. They offer 180.8 for men, 170 for women, 350.8 in total. They also offer sports for which the NCAA has no scholarship limits. I don't know if Stanford awards scholarships in any of them. These are Sailing (M+W), and for women, Synchronized swimming and Squash.

They do not offer several sports. For men, these include Lacrosse, Skiing, Ice Hockey and Rifle. For women, Bowling, Equestrian, Ice Hockey, Rugby and Skiing.

I know that Stanford has a very large endowment for their Athletics Department that is separate from the University endowment. Does ND also have a separate endowment? And does anybody know if BC does? And, does anybody know if BC offered all these sports when they were in the BE, or did they add some when they joined the ACC?

It's amazing what you can find out when you challenge your own preconceived ideas. I thought Stanford was king, but Ohio State blows them out of the water. The Buckeyes have a staggering 210.5 men's scholarships, and 175 for women, for a total of 385.5. That's a whopping 10% more than the Cardinal.

Even so, due to the difference in tuition costs, Stanford's cost of scholarships is about $6 million higher than OSU's. Before we feel sorry for them, though, the income Stanford gets from its athletic endowment is much greater - enough, in fact, to fully fund its entire scholarship cost with about $15 million left over. As the saying goes, it's good to be rich!

(04-09-2014 10:47 AM)ChrisLords Wrote:  My last donation reminder stated "Last year you helped to insure that the scholarship bill for our 500 student athletes was paid". I find that interesting since you said the maximum for every sport was 440. Clearly not all 500 athletes are on scholarship but it's still more than the maximum you stated and we don't field every sport.

Partial scholarships. 200 full scholarship amounts could be spread amongst 500 students. I bet that accounts for the difference.

(04-10-2014 10:37 AM)ken d Wrote:  It's amazing what you can find out when you challenge your own preconceived ideas. I thought Stanford was king, but Ohio State blows them out of the water. The Buckeyes have a staggering 210.5 men's scholarships, and 175 for women, for a total of 385.5. That's a whopping 10% more than the Cardinal.

Even so, due to the difference in tuition costs, Stanford's cost of scholarships is about $6 million higher than OSU's. Before we feel sorry for them, though, the income Stanford gets from its athletic endowment is much greater - enough, in fact, to fully fund its entire scholarship cost with about $15 million left over. As the saying goes, it's good to be rich!

Scholarship costs also don't represent actual costs to the university. The only cost the university to the extent that the cost of tuition covers variable costs.

I guess that's the long way of saying don't feel too bad for these universities, even the ones without Stanford-sized endowments.