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Reply to "Stanford cutting 11 sports"

After the other Ivys, the next set of student athletes and their parents who should be concerned about sports cuts are those who attend D3 small liberal arts colleges (LACs). At a typical small LAC with an entering class size of 400-600 students, varsity athletes can easily make up 20-25% of the student body. For example, Williams sponsors 30 varsity teams (https://ephsports.williams.edu/landing/index) and has an entering class of about 550 students. if Williams cut 10 sports, they could probably reduce the number of athletes in each class down to ~15% while freeing up more spots for other non-athlete students who could bring more diversity and/or academic accomplishment to the study body.

Many, if not most, of the small LACs that are not Top 20 academically ranked are already constantly facing financial pressures prior to Covid due to their small endowments, and heavy reliance on tuition (and tuition discounting) to meet their annual net revenues while meeting enrollment targets. Going forward, some of these LACs will be forced to close and many others will need to find areas to cut expenses including sports.

For the Top 20 academic LACs like Williams, Amherst, etc., their larger endowments and overall desirability will somewhat insulate them from pure financial pressures to cut sports, but they are facing the same institutional pressures that Stanford and the Ivys are facing as to how they want the composition of their study body to look like going forward. As the pressure ramps up to maintain their academic prestige and increase diversity while facing a demographic cliff of smaller graduating high school classes over the next few decades, I predict these high academic LACs will follow the Ivys and also begin cutting down on the number of sports they offer.

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