are the power 5 conference schools all providing stipends for all scholarship athletes ? Or is this just an option ?
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Not many folks like to discuss stipends apparently. I think all big five are handing these out. My understanding is that they are prorated along with the scholarship percentage. Am still waiting for confirmation as I have no first hand experience.
The reason is ask is that my son has two offers. One acc one big 10. Acc school didn't even mention stipend. I didn't know enough to ask At the time. Big 10 school said baseball gets full stipend i did a little research online and the info is all over the place. Hard to figure it out. this is not a decision factor for us but i was curious.
Your son should reach out to each school's Recruiting Coordinator, asking each the dollar amount of the Cost of Attendance stipend being offered. With two offers in hand, there's no need to rely on anyone's generalization here.
Congratulations to your son!
pabaseballdad - first off, congratulations on the two offers. If you do call, please update with any information they provide other than $xxx. Things like the stipend is prorated with scholarship (or not) and any info on how those schools currently calculate the gross stipend (again, I believe this is based on the school's cost of attendance which they compile) and any comments on whether the conference in question expects some type of standardized calculation in the future.
This Cost of Attendance stipend is a new and complicated concept for everybody, including the coaches and the compliance administrators for Division I universities (and myself). The NCAA issued a Question and Answer document to Division I compliance administrators and conference offices on the new rules involved in this Division I Autonomy governing structure, and the number of questions and answers on topic of Cost of Attendance alone was 28!!
With that said, it appears that whether the cost of attendance is prorated in proportion to the scholarship percentage, may depend upon the way the actual scholarship offer is written. If the scholarship offer is written as "25% of a full athletic scholarship", then the cost of attendance would be prorated at 25%.
If, however, the scholarship is written for a specific dollar amount ($10,000), or for a specific item (tuition, or, room and board), then it appears that the school may have discretion to include the stipend or not.
It has clearly caused a lot of questions from coaches and campus compliance administrators, so don't be surprised if you get different answers from different universities.
Rick - thanks for the informed update. I am betting that there will be lots of discussion and possible rulemaking around this topic for a couple of years. The absolute range of the stipend within a given conference is simply too big for the low end guys (Alabama comes to mind) to not either have the rules changed (set amount for all) or start working with the Admin to get their specific stipend amount increased (even though the Admin is supposed to provide this figure for prospective students - and are not supposed to be influenced by the Athletic departments).
Also saw your clarification on the Grant-in-aid/NLI. Everyone's confidence in your expertise should be heightened even further!
Thanks for the insight. I think I'll need to get a lawyer to review NLI when the time comes!
Just read where Alabama's stipend figure for 2015-2016 almost doubled from the 2014-2015 published amount - apparently now stands at $5,586. Didn't take too long for the football program to get that figure "corrected". Ohio State is still only $2,602.