A couple things to add. The surplus that no longer gets returned to the student athlete does NOT get returned to the coach’s athletic program budget.
There is a huge lack of transparency, as every program’s coach was asking what our surplus was for the last 18 months, in order, to relay it back and use it for future our scholarships.
The college does say, “Coached are not allowed to know the students pell assistance, “ and we are to not factor that into the offer.
The surplus is used to the benefit of the college, and essentially if there is a surplus, it’s bad for both the coach and the athlete. With the coaching not knowing the pell amount, it means they get faulted for not knowing. Investigating this amount allows for a huge adorable.
For our scholarships, each athletic program goes off an average for our scholarships. In short, discount/percentage. Example: if total cost is 10,000, we have to average a 1,000 scholarship per athlete, as well as, bring in a vast amount of athletes.
Put athletic programs, in the past, did have our scholarship process and protocol noted in detail in our J-drive, but for the last 2 years we no longer have done so. It does not matter how much the coaches ask for this to be written and put into a document form, we have yet been unable to obtain such documentation.
Our women’s basketball coach and women’s soccer coach did not have their contract renewed. The were both conference coaches of the year, and both were the sole two coaches who spoke up about having issues with this and wanting it to be documented. They were respectful but firm. So yes, Ultra dude, you’re right about there being retaliation by the college. Your intuition and thoughts could not be more accurate.
An additional fallacy for the athlete is if the student is one of the higher end scholarship’d student-athletes and they decide to live off campus, their scholarship does not go past tuition and fees total cost. Previously, the student-athlete may have had dorms and meals partly paid for, but if they are off campus, their surplus does not go to them.
The problem this causes is our on campus costs is crazy high, with dorms at 8,000-9,000 a year. To live off campus, it is 250 a month for the rental house for the student-athletes on our team. Our meal plan is additionally very high at 6,000 per year. Thus, it’s hard to find a balance for any student-athlete to make it affordable.
This does negatively affect the college, as it’s harder to recruit and bring in student-athletes with unappealing costs. The college’s lack of transparency is also driving student-athletes away.
To reiterate- if a coach overshoots, it’s taken and no relayed back.
We did have 7 student athletes who did not receive one of their outside scholarships till the last/2nd to last month of the semester. The college purposely delayed packaging the student to acquire this surplus.