Today, the University of Arizona basketball team takes on Long Beach State University, kicking off the NCAA's wildly popular and lucrative men's basketball tournament known as March Madness.
The Wildcats are a contender to make a run at the national championship given their high seeding and strong regular season record, but they are an outlier at the UA, despite the track and field department's overall struggles. This is a team that generates positive income for the university.
After discovering a $177 million shortfall due to a flawed budget model and overspending on strategic initiatives, Arizona State President Robert Robbins announced the It warned that “severe cuts” could be made. to repay a $55 million loan from the university during the coronavirus pandemic. Robbins warned in November that individual sports could be in dire straits.
As a revenue-generating sport, men's basketball is almost certainly safe. The same goes for soccer. But other sports may also be in jeopardy, as some athletic departments struggle to generate revenue, a common problem across the NCAA. If Arizona enacts significant cuts, it would follow a broader trend at the Division I level. There, universities that have built reputations and alumni support on solid track and field athletics are increasingly eliminating certain programs, often Olympic events such as swimming and track and field. And the field and tennis.
Stephen Ditmore, dean of Baldwin Wallace University's College of Education and Health Sciences, studies trends in college athletics. According to his analysis, Division I universities are eliminating sports programs and Division III universities are adding sports teams. Sitting in the middle is Division II, the smallest of the three, but Ditmore considers it relatively flat.
Finances continue to be the driving force. While Division I universities are cutting programs to cut costs, Division III universities, which are not allowed to offer athletic scholarships, are trying to increase enrollment and attract more tuition-paying students. We are adding sports in hopes of drawing them to campus.
“When you look at the profile of campuses that add sports, it’s not a very selective institution that has a really large endowment and a lot of tradition and history,” Ditmore said. “Schools that aren’t in that group are more likely to add sports.”
Adding and removing sports
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States in early 2020, prompting many educational institutions to lock down and move classes online, the world of college athletics was plunged into uncertainty. . Campus closures have resulted in significant revenue losses as sports seasons have been canceled or shortened, stadiums are empty, and universities and academic societies have missed out on lucrative broadcast contracts.
As a result, many organizations have cut back on various sports. Institutions canceled 352 NCAA programs from March to November 2020 due to coronavirus-related budget issues, according to an ESPN analysis.
Since then, several Division I organizations have made headlines by canceling multiple sports even after the pandemic eased due to continued economic hardship. Late last year, Lindenwood University in Missouri announced it would cut 10 athletic teams. And in January, Loyola Marymount University in California announced it would eliminate six sports.
Some went further. St. Francis College in Brooklyn has cut all its athletic programs, citing enrollment and demographic challenges and the need for a bold “strategic realignment.”
The rationale for most institutions is pretty much the same: “to save money.”
Ditmore looked at 20 years of U.S. Department of Education data from the 2002-2003 school year to the 2021-22 school year and found that Division I institutions shed an average of 0.23 games per college. Meanwhile, Division III teams added an average of two sports each during that period.
Economics was an additional driver for these.
“These are what are called enrollment-driven institutions, and keeping students on campus is critical as the lifeblood of campus finances,” Ditmore said, adding that students can pursue their core passions at the university. He pointed out that adding sports teams could lead to more recruitment. their identity.
In that sense, he pointed out, athletics is much like any other extracurricular activity as a recruiting tool.
“A university is [adding sports] This is not only a way to increase your subscriber numbers, but also a way to gain a bit of a competitive advantage as you look to the future of your service. [demographic] “It's the cliff that everyone talks about when it comes to students trying to get into college,” he said.
Possibility of admission
Adding sports to increase enrollment isn't necessarily a winning strategy, according to a recent analysis by Brian Cook and Elise Collin of the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan research organization. Not exclusively.
In a study of 325 Division III institutions that looked at data from 2005 to 2020, Cook and Collin found that adding sports programs or hiring full-time coaches, which is not standard across divisions, III program found mixed results on enrollment for colleges that invested in athletics. In some cases, this strategy appears to be highly successful. For example, Adrian College in Michigan has added 30 sports since 2005 and enrollment has doubled since then.
But the picture is more complex.
Of the 325 institutions Cook and Collin surveyed, 201 invested in athletics. Of those, 91 of his institutions saw an increase in enrollment, less than half of them. At the remaining 110 of his schools, enrollment has stagnated or declined.
“There are pros and cons to this, and understanding how investing in sports will impact a particular school requires many nuances,” said Cook, director of higher education policy at the Urban Institute. I think there is,” he said. He added that many factors need to be considered, including the popularity of the sport within the university's region and the cost of adding the program.
Of the 124 institutions that did not make additional investments in athletics, enrollment increased in 64 institutions and decreased in 60 institutions.
“It's not so clear that if we didn't add a sport or invest in a full-time coach, we wouldn't have increased enrollment,” said Scott, a research analyst with the Urban Institute's Education Data Center. Colin says. policy. “It's clear they were successful in increasing enrollment in other ways.”
Adding a sport or hiring a full-time coach may provide students at Division III institutions with an opportunity to play at the collegiate level, but in the absence of athletic scholarships, such The move will do little to alleviate affordability issues that often prevent students from pursuing it. degree.
“Simply adding sports does not eliminate cost barriers that may exist for students,” Cook said.
Some educational institutions that had relied on athletics to alleviate admissions difficulties have suffered further setbacks, with some even facing closure. For example, Fontbonne University in Missouri added sprint football in 2022, which requires players to weigh less than 178 pounds. Last year, a Fontbonne official said: Inside Higher ed The university has recruited 45 students for the new team. Although it was not an officially sanctioned sport by the NCAA, officials saw the Sprint Football program as a way to increase enrollment. The growing popularity of the sport in recent years is expected to further increase its adoption potential.
But this spring, Fontbourne announced it would close next year. Despite efforts to increase enrollment through athletics, the university continued to struggle to attract students.
An uncertain future
The coronavirus pandemic has caused significant disruption to college athletics, but it may pale in comparison to the seismic shifts that the NCAA's pending legal battles portend. Perhaps the most important issue going forward is the unionization of college athletes, an issue that has been swirling since Northwestern University's football team attempted to unionize in 2014.
That effort failed, but labor protections for college athletes have since gained momentum. Earlier this month, Dartmouth College's men's basketball team voted 13-2 to organize, marking a historic first. However, university officials are resisting this move.
If college athletes were to be recognized as employees (something many lawmakers, especially Republicans, oppose), it could lead to a paradigm shift in terms of compensation expectations.
Ditmore suspects that requiring players to be compensated will encourage universities to withdraw. Many Division I universities will likely narrow their programs down to 16, which is the minimum number required by the NCAA to maintain Division I status. He believes that's especially true for Division I programs that are already struggling.
“If sports programs suddenly start paying their athletes as employees, and that means they have to run budget deficits, there's no incentive for them to be active much beyond the age of 16. What is it?'' Ditmore asked.
Uncertainty in Arizona
And then there's Arizona.
As the highly-seeded Wildcats look poised to make a run for the NCAA men's basketball title, college athletics is a source of pride and faculty's anger over how the UA has supported its athletics department. It is also a point of contention. I was constantly losing money. Cuts may have been made across academic departments to make up the $177 million shortfall, further heightening faculty concerns about such grants.
Lately, however, Arizona seems to be changing its mind about sport cuts.
In November, Chancellor Robbins assured faculty that all options were on the table. But Desiree Reed-Francois, who UA appointed as its new athletic director last month, told local reporters at her inaugural press conference that the athletic department has no intention of cutting programs to cut costs. In return, UA is appealing for more support from donors.
For months, UA officials appear to have reconsidered athletics.
Asked about the potential changes to athletics and when and why officials reversed plans to eliminate certain sports, an Arizona State spokesperson made this point. Inside higher education At Reed Francois' press conference, Robbins and the new athletic director emphasized fundraising efforts.
But for now, the community will watch the Wildcats tip off in Salt Lake City, hoping to earn a ticket home to the championship.
