First-of-its-Kind Study: Scholarship Discrimination Against Men in NCAA Sports
By Robert Franklin, Esq. | Jul 24, 2009
The College Sports Council has done a study of NCAA Division I athletic scholarships and come up with some surprising (to some) conclusions. Here’s the CSC’s summary of their findings.
In "gender symmetric" sports, i.e. those in which both sexes participate, scholarships available to women far outnumber those available to men. And since far more boys than girls take part in high school athletics, the ratios of scholarships to male candidates, versus scholarships to female candidates is radically unequal. As CSC chairman Eric Pearson said,
This new study appears to provide prima facie evidence of disparate treatment of male students by the 28% of NCAA Division I schools that don’t sponsor football teams.
The study removed football scholarships because that is not a gender symmetric sport.
Using NCAA data, the CSC found that overall, there are 2,653 women’s teams versus 2,097 for men in Division I, a 26.5% difference. In gender symmetric sports, women’s scholarships outnumber men’s by about 62%, 32,656 to 20,206.
The findings regarding the number of athletes per available scholarship include the following,
In every "gender symmetric" sport with the exception of gymnastics, men face longer odds against getting a scholarship than women. By far, the most difficult athletic scholarship to obtain at the Division I level is in men’s volleyball, where there are 489 high school athletes for every full NCAA scholarship. Similar long odds exist for men competing in Track and Field/Cross-Country (221 to 1), Soccer and Water Polo (196 to 1) and Tennis (136 to 1).
Those who object to the CSC’s findings point to the fact that the data exclude football scholarships. To them, the fact that all football scholarships are given to males balances the inequalities of the gender symmetric sports. How a football scholarship is supposed to benefit a boy whose sport is tennis or volleyball, these critics don’t explain. Likewise, how a school that doesn’t field a football team should be able to ignore the requirements of Title IX because other schools elsewhere do offer football goes unexplained.
" can’t comment on a study I’ve never seen, nor can you.
How can you be certain the claims made above are indeed correct? You can’t because you have no evidence."
Usual and typical comment from a feminist..
They will release any shady, lying as well as questionable report but whoa and behold should anyone dare to suggest that they are sexist watch the fireworks..
Feminists are liars, this is a proven and obvious fact..
Its the same old story: if it disadvantages women its sexism, but if it disadvantages men its equality.
How do they get away with this? Moms and Dads and schoolkids should totally reject this policy. I would go as far as to say a boycott is warranted to correct this problem.
Edit
Object of Its Ire: "That’s discrimination against girls in the sport of wrestling".
LOL! This is what feminism is all about – shaping the world to fit the needs of lady wrestlers. In fact last year in the UK a large amount of government funding was allocated to training women wrestlers. And how many women wrestlers are there in the UK? Last I heard nobody was found to take the funding. Feminists had demanded the funding on principal but there was no real need for it. And of course the money could have gone to sports that people actually want to take part in.
A serious problem with modern feminism is this freeloading mentality – minority lifestyle choices should get government funding out of proportion any possible benefit to society. Except of course to see angry feminists wrestle each other (… hmmm… might be onto something here).
Where does the money come from? You can bet it won’t be from feminists, unless they get a handout from the government through pester power.
March 29th, 2010 at 12:16 pm
Its the same old story: if it disadvantages women its sexism, but if it disadvantages men its equality.
How do they get away with this? Moms and Dads and schoolkids should totally reject this policy. I would go as far as to say a boycott is warranted to correct this problem.
Edit
Object of Its Ire: "That’s discrimination against girls in the sport of wrestling".
LOL! This is what feminism is all about – shaping the world to fit the needs of lady wrestlers. In fact last year in the UK a large amount of government funding was allocated to training women wrestlers. And how many women wrestlers are there in the UK? Last I heard nobody was found to take the funding. Feminists had demanded the funding on principal but there was no real need for it. And of course the money could have gone to sports that people actually want to take part in.
A serious problem with modern feminism is this freeloading mentality – minority lifestyle choices should get government funding out of proportion any possible benefit to society. Except of course to see angry feminists wrestle each other (… hmmm… might be onto something here).
Where does the money come from? You can bet it won’t be from feminists, unless they get a handout from the government through pester power.
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March 29th, 2010 at 12:49 pm
It is feminism, what did you expect equality?
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March 29th, 2010 at 12:56 pm
Thumbs up to Doodle’s. He summed it up.
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March 29th, 2010 at 1:35 pm
"Feminists are liars, this is a proven and obvious fact.."
-the rest of your argument is great, but this just asks for a fight.
Now, this could easily be a mere occurrence which has nothing to do with feminist movements. It is definitely unfair, but I don’t think we can blame it on women.
You know, when I think about it, if a study with the roles switched was presented to a modern feminist, I think most(not all) feminists would immediately blame the problem on men.
I see your point though, women’s problems nowadays are paid much more attention than men’s problems. of course, women were treated unfairly in the past, but many of those problems have been fixed. I notice that many feminists nowadays are no longer fighting for equality, but for revenge.
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March 29th, 2010 at 1:57 pm
Before Title IX many women were not even allowed to participate in sports. If men have slimmer odds of getting a scholarship, couldn’t it perhaps be due to the fact that there are more male athletes than female athletes? I think until the day comes that professional athletes who are women are celebrated to the degree that male athletes are, when we have the respect for the WNBA that we do for the NBA, some form of discrimination is more than justified.
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March 29th, 2010 at 2:08 pm
Are scholarships provided (funded) by corporations and other kinds of volunteer organisations? Do they get to choose the qualifications of the candidates? How does one go about boycotting the funding organisations if there are, say, 1000 of them? If I want to fund a volleyball scholarship available only to brunette girls who wear glasses and play jazz drums, is that not up to me to decide?
(I am not making a point here. I really do not know the answers to the above questions.)
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March 29th, 2010 at 2:36 pm
+1 to doodle
"Its the same old story: if it disadvantages women its sexism, but if it disadvantages men its equality."
true true, what people don’t understand that feminism does not support equal rights of men and women, it fights for the dominance of woman.
Much like the ancient Greeks and Romans (where only men could take part in government and most high ranking jobs, while women were confined to strict social standards and the low paying jobs) but reversed in favor of the women
"If you try to balance a field by tipping it, the points may be linear, as are all two points, but they are not level"
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March 29th, 2010 at 3:05 pm
Most women who play sports are ugly.
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March 29th, 2010 at 3:41 pm
The absence of fems answering this question says more than they ever could ;-D
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March 29th, 2010 at 4:19 pm
Maybe scholarships should be for scholars.
Secondly, you have to include all scholarships in the mix. This studies flaw was in excluding football and other male only sports. When you include football you get the real picture of an overall athletic department.
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March 29th, 2010 at 4:42 pm
Antagoni is absolutely right,
"Secondly, you have to include all scholarships in the mix. This study’s flaw was in excluding football and other male-only sports. When you include football you get the real picture of an overall athletic department."
And EmeraldC is right on when writing, "when the WNBA gets the same respect as the NBA…"
And, I might add, the same news coverage, sponsorships, and salaries!
This article is just cherry picking the data to make it look like men are being discriminated against in college sports scholarships.
How laughable is that.
Title IX is very far from reaching the goal of sex equity in school sports.
The proliferation of sports scholarships for women has been PRECISELY to encourage women to break the barriers, break the mold, and go into sports, for which there still is not equal funding, and for which women and girls are still not encouraged to the degree that boys are. That is why there are so many more men competing for the mens’ scholarships than women are for the women’s scholarships.
Plus, the men know that some of them will be offered staggering amounts of money in professional sports. Millions and millions.
Not so for women athletes.
Guys, please stop this whining! It’s embarassing.
References :
Women’s Sports Foundation