Division I institutions may learn enrollment tactics from their Division II and Division III cohorts
Athletics Veritas is a weekly series aimed at helping higher education executives, faculty, and other stakeholders stay tuned in on trending national issues impacting college athletics, especially NCAA Division I. Athletics Veritas is created by senior DI athletic administrators around the nation.
If an NCAA Institution’s Enrollment is Teetering, Could Adding a Sport During the Pandemic Be a Solution?
Recently published National Student Clearinghouse data shows that enrollment at postsecondary institutions declined in Fall 2020 by 2.5%, nearly twice the rate of enrollment decline in Fall 2019
For-profit institutions were the only sector to experience enrollment growth at both undergraduate and graduate levels
Division I institutions may learn enrollment tactics from their Division II and Division III cohorts
Pandemic-era sport sponsorship add/drop data from all three NCAA divisions and NAIA
Identifying Olympic sports and other trending sport activities with the highest enrollment revenue ROI
Editor’s Note: AV acknowledges and thanks Dr. Steve Dittmore of AthleticDirectorU and Professor of Recreation and Sport Management at the University of Arkansas for his contributions to this article.
During the pandemic, the topic of sports sponsorship has most frequently made headlines when it has concerned the elimination of a program or programs. In fact, it seems as if adding programs given the sobering financial realities is the farthest thing from the minds of presidents and athletic directors. But should it be?
According to a December 2020 report by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center (NSCRC), overall postsecondary enrollments declined 2.5% in fall 2020, nearly twice the rate of enrollment decline reported in fall 2019. A dip in undergraduate enrollment was the primary driver for this decline, decreasing 3.6% (over 560,200 students) from 2019. Most notable is the public two-year sector, which suffered the largest enrollment downturn this fall while all other major institutional sectors had more positive enrollment outcomes than they did last fall.
In a bright spot for fall 2020, graduate enrollment increased by over 98,800 students, or 3.6% from the previous fall. Graduate enrollment increases were evident across all institutional sectors, with the largest increase seen at public four-year institutions (over 62,500 students, 4.6% increase).
Public two-year institutions recorded enrollment losses of over 544,200 students (10.1%) over last year. NCAA schools should be taking note of that number since two-year college graduates who wish to continue their education would logically matriculate to four-year institutions including those participating in athletics. Private nonprofit four-year institutions also saw slight declines (roughly 3,400 students, 0.1%), though not to the same magnitude of public two-year colleges.
The NSCRC report wasn’t all grim. Public four-year institutions’ enrollment increased 0.2% (an additional 14,300 students) from last fall, driven by the growth in graduate enrollment and undergraduate-level certificate or other non-degree program enrollments. Meanwhile, private for-profit four-year institutions grew by 5.3% year-over-year and comprised the only sector to demonstrate enrollment growth at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. This sector accounts for a small share of postsecondary enrollment (4.4%), and the majority of NCAA student-athletes fall within the undergraduate degree-seeking sector at four-year public and private non-profit institutions. For-profit institutions have not found a foothold within the NCAA membership either, so the positive-trending data may not reassure many presidents, chancellors, admissions directors and enrollment managers at NCAA schools.
The most relevant data point from the NSCRC report may be that public college enrollment (two-year and four-year combined), which enrolls seven out of 10 postsecondary students, declined by 4% (nearly 530,000 students) this fall, mainly due to decreases at public two-year institutions.
Using sport sponsorship to help drive enrollment has been the traditional formula at smaller colleges and universities, especially among the Division II and Division III ranks.
As HigherEdDive reported, smaller colleges may be more inclined to save sports because they are part of the university's enrollment strategy. Ithaca College, a Division III institution, fields between 750 and 800 student-athletes each year and enrolls 6,200 undergraduates in all. Susan Bassett, director of intercollegiate athletics and recreational sports at Ithaca College, said the institution is "miles and miles away" from cutting any sports programs. That's in part because of ongoing cost-containment and restructuring efforts across the institution, such as retirement incentives, that are helping manage expenses.
"We feel like...our programs meet the needs and interests of our community and contribute very favorably to our enrollment, to our engagement, campus spirit and student activities," Bassett said.
So would a university dare add a sport during the pandemic?
The answer is yes. Enter New England College.
For Dave DeCew, athletic director at New England College in Henniker, N.H., the addition of men’s golf to his department’s offerings had been in the works for months. So while the current pandemic did not serve as the catalyst for the change, neither did it serve as a deterrent. “It was something we were planning already. We felt like we had a coach on campus in mind, and it was as good of a potential option as we could find,” DeCew told me.
And so, on March 20, 2020, eight days after the NCAA canceled winter and spring competitions, New England College became the first university to add a sport in the pandemic.
“We had great buy-in from our president and administration. They recognize sports as a vehicle to drive enrollment,” said DeCew, who acknowledged men’s golf had the added benefit of not needing access to existing on-campus athletic facilities which were already saturated.
Men’s golf at New England College is one of 32 sports added at NCAA Division III institutions since mid-March, and one of 96 added (as of October 24, 2020) across the entire landscape of college athletics at four-year institutions based on data accumulated and kept by Athletic Director U. And while much of the media attention has focused on the high-profile programs cut at Power 5 schools such as Minnesota, Iowa, and Stanford, the reality is the overall net number of sports eliminated since the pandemic, when excluding sports at universities which have ceased operations altogether, is just 46.
As the table below shows, however, that storyline differs dramatically across divisions of college athletics. As of October 24, 2020, NCAA Division I has lost a net of 85 sports, while NCAA Division II is down 27 programs and Division III has cut only 8 programs, again controlling for school closures. Meanwhile, the NAIA has witnessed a net increase of six sports. Of the 214 sports dropped, 75 are the result of schools closing entirely or ceasing all athletics.
NOTES:
DI does not include 11 sports reinstated at Brown, Bowling Green, Alabama-Huntsville and William & Mary as either added and dropped.
DII includes 11 sports dropped by Notre Dame de Namur University’s ceasing athletics as well as 17 sports eliminated by Urbana University’s closing.
DIII includes 13 sports dropped by JWU Denver’s ceasing athletics and 14 sports from MacMurray College’s closing.
NAIA includes 11 sports dropped by JWU North Miami’s ceasing athletics and 9 sports from Holy Family College’s closing.
How these figures compare to a normal year is not known. In other words, are the 96 programs added during the seven-month window since March consistent with non-pandemic years? We can’t be sure. Pundits have asserted that the elimination of 214 total sports in the seven months since the pandemic arrived in the U.S. is correlated to the financial challenges associated with the pandemic or, at least, the pandemic is providing cover for such moves. USA Today columnist Christine Brennan called into question the logic behind cutting non-revenue sports, stating that by “eliminating these sports and driving away these student-athletes, they are weakening their university community.”
Former athletic director Donna Lopiano, writing in Forbes, also questioned the thought process behind cutting sports, although for different reasons, suggesting universities “used Covid as the convenient excuse and smokescreen to justify the sacrifice of non-revenue sports that they have wanted to drop for years so they could redirect those budget dollars back to football and basketball.”
Finally, Tom Farrey of the Aspen Institute wrote in an editorial published in the New York Times that cutting varsity sports might not be so bad because many of them will transition to club sports. “How terrible could that shift be? Club athletes represent their colleges, wear the colors, but play more on their terms, not those of an athletic department groaning under the strain of an NCAA rulebook and of a business model that turns many athletes into employees without paychecks.”
While the headlines covering the elimination of sports have been frequent, few people are writing about adding sports even though, on the surface, adding sports seems like a potential solution for many of the tuition-dependent Division II and III schools staring down a crisis of declining enrollment and shrinking revenues. Even the NCAA’s own chief medical officer sounded the alarm during the Project Play Summit when he suggested 20-30% of Division III schools were not likely to survive the pandemic.
So, why should universities be looking to add sports? What benefits could that proposition present to a university and its athletic department? What do the trends tell us about how athletic administrators view the sports to be added?
The answers to the first two questions were explored in a July story by Sportico’s Eben Novy-Williams, who had sports economist Andy Schwarz analyze the financial cases of Central Michigan, Akron and Western Kentucky. While WKU has not cut any sports, CMU and Akron both have, and all three have witnessed steep enrollment declines. “In all three cases, (Schwarz) found that the schools would make more money if they nearly doubled the number of equivalency sports they offered.”
In particular, sports which might fit this description, such as field hockey, lacrosse, and wrestling, are those with low NCAA DI equivalency limits but no limits on counters. Women’s triathlon is also listed in the chart as it is an emerging sport which has seen growth at the DI level since the pandemic. To get a sense for average roster size, we utilized Next College Student Athlete’s (NCSA) recruiting guides for each sport.
Each of these sports exhibits a participant-to-equivalency ratio of anywhere between 2:1 to almost 4:1 (assuming they are fully funded). As Schwarz told Novy-Williams, “I would imagine that for a lot of schools that are really struggling with enrollment, if they could find a way to double the size of the so-called non-revenue portion of the athletic department, they would make more money.”
In fact, the higher the ratio of participants to equivalencies allowed, the more athletes have to cover their tuition through other means, and the more (potentially) profitable these sports can be for the university as a whole. So, are the sports mentioned above being added during the pandemic. The quick answer is no.
The variety of sports added during the pandemic is significant when viewing men’s and women’s programs as separate, but only three sports saw gains of five or more programs. Overall, sports recognized by the NCAA as Emerging Sports for Women have seen increases with new programs added in women’s wrestling, women’s triathlon, women’s acrobatics and tumbling, and women’s rugby. In addition, STUNT recently received a recommendation from the Committee on Women’s Athletics to join the program. Overall, 19 of the 98 sports added during the period fall in this group, and that is a good thing.
But it is the most-added sport which raises eyebrows. To many, the growth of esports is not surprising. The NCAA featured it on the cover of Champion magazine in March 2018. Earlier this month, Team Marketing Report asked the question of whether esports could fill a void on mid-major campuses. With 17 new varsity programs since March, most at tuition-dependent universities, it certainly seems that is the case. As TMR reported, “the interest in esports as a viable property that can attract global—and co-ed—teams of students from various disciplines is intriguing to many.”
And, as if esports needed more validation, Learfield IMG College is aggressively entering the esports event and rights space. But before athletic departments rush to add esports programs, administrators need to understand the ecosystem of esports is different than that of traditional sports, and vice versa. Esports prospectively presents a different financial commitment for universities than Division I sports (more technology, less team travel) and esports programs reside in a less regulated neighborhood than NCAA sport programs. Perhaps as a result, we are seeing growth on the academic side of universities to create degree programs which offer students the ability to learn more about the emerging field.
The National Federation of State High School Associations is unable to publish its annual participation data for 2019-20 due to the loss of spring sports. So, using 2018-19 figures we find that participation in girls’ wrestling is up 344% (during a 10-year span from 2009-10 to 2018-19. The number of participants grew from 6,134 to 21,124 while the number of programs grew from 1,009 to 2,890. So, it is not necessarily surprising that since March, universities have added nine women’s wrestling programs.
Similarly, youth lacrosse participation is exploding as evidenced by increases of nearly 1,000 programs each on the boys and girls side at the high school level in the past decade. The number of participants is up greater than 30,000 girls and 23,000 boys. However, as the table shows, lacrosse programs have not only not grown, but they suffered a net decrease of three programs since March.
Even before most schools had announced pandemic-related cuts, Terry Foy, CEO of Inside Lacrosse, was campaigning for schools to add lacrosse. “Men’s lacrosse has the capacity to drive more tuition dollars than any other men’s niche/Olympic/non-revenue sport,” Foy wrote in early May. Lacrosse has a nearly 4:1 participant-to-equivalency ratio on the men’s side, and a 2.5:1 ratio on the women’s side.
I asked him to expand on why adding lacrosse programs makes financial sense for universities, and he immediately pointed to the participant-to-equivalency ratio. “It’s not publicly available how many scholarships a private university’s men’s lacrosse team offers, but based on my significant anecdotal research, I suspect that of the 64 programs that can offer scholarships (74 programs minus 3 service academies and 7 Ivies), the average is about 9 scholarships,” he told me. “Probably 30-35 fully funded, 20 between eight and fully funded and about 10-15 between 0 and 4.”
Foy estimated for most DI programs, fielding a men’s lacrosse team would produce the equivalent of 38 full tuition-paying athletes. Yet, despite the seemingly obvious financial benefits to a university, the challenge associated with going all-in on a lacrosse program is too great for many athletic administrators. “In private conversations, many administrators from departments that don’t currently sponsor men’s lacrosse say something like, ‘If we were starting from scratch, of course we’d have lacrosse.’” Foy wrote in May. “Those same administrators, though, mention that their athletic departments are already too large to add another program, and that the pain of dropping sports exceeds (or has exceeded) the economic value back to the department of subsequently adding men’s lacrosse.”
Adding a sport at any NCAA level, let alone Division I, does not happen with the flip of a switch or in a vacuum. A newly sponsored sport requires program funding, facilities, staffing, and recruitment, among other foundational elements, to get off the ground. There are also Title IX considerations when adding one sport, especially with a larger average roster size.
Even so, it is certain that athletic directors are not the only ones on Division I campuses pondering their institution’s sport sponsorship portfolio. Admissions directors and enrollment managers at Division I institutions, including the Power 5, may lend a willing ear to the possibilities of an influx of high-paying tuition student-athletes.
Athletics Veritas is presented for information purposes only and should not be considered advice or counsel on NCAA compliance matters. For guidance on NCAA rules and processes, always consult your university’s athletics compliance office, conference office, and/or the NCAA.
