Mostly because of Football. However Baseball will be affected as well.
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Here is some additional back story
Had heard talk this was coming from my son (and someone from St. Johns who was scouting the last Tommies game I went to). Don't really know all the backstory, but the enrollment disparities are real.
St. Thomas needs to move up to D2, like Concordia(MN). Their enrollment gives them a large advantage when it comes to their athletic teams. The football coach didn't help their case for staying in the MIAC by running up the score on the lesser teams in the conference, but the bottom line is that their profile doesn't match the profile of the other schools in the conference.
ST. Thomas has won the D3 Baseball national championship twice, and been to the finals 4 times. No other MIAC team has ever gone that far.
Other interesting outliers: Johns Hopkins, Chicago, Tufts. They all play in conferences where the rest of the schools have significantly lower enrollments. All three made conference playoffs and in recent years Tufts and Hopkins have dominated those and I’m betting Chicago will, too, now that they’re in a conference. Wash U, Hopkins, Tufts, and Case Western are either in the top 25 or received votes. Issues are at play (academics and admissions standards) I realize but I wonder why the UAA didn’t last as a conference for all those schools, who I think actually were affiliated at one time? Finances?
The difference is that the MIAC is a mix of HA , not so HA, and all points in between. Carleton is a top 10 LAC with very high academic standards. On my 2018's HS team of about 18-20 kids. only about two would have the grades to possibly get in, even with baseball. I would say that at least 15 of those 20 could get into St.Thomas. Schools like Carleton and Macalester are doubly handicapped by their small enrollments relative to St. Thomas, and their admission standards eliminating a far larger swathe of athletes than at a school like St. Thomas.
Hopkins, Tufts, and the like, while being larger, still has the same problem common to most HA's.
Baseball is not really the problem. It's more about football, I think, where large amounts of bodies are needed. At least St. John's is an all male school, so there twice the amount of students to choose from that you'd expect.
I don’t know the MIAC at all, but my son has gotten some interest from a couple of schools there, as well as some others mentioned in this thread.
Does enrollment size really matter for colleges since they can recruit their players? HS is different: more students means more potential players. But MIAC schools aren’t generally fielding many true walk-ons, are they?
Seems like academic standards would be more important. (I say this not being familiar with any of the MIAC schools other than Carleton and Macalester, so I’m not trying to throw shade at any school.) The pool of shortstops good enough to play D3 college ball who also have at least a 30 ACT is going to be smaller than those with at least a 25 ACT. Is there (that) much of a range of academics among the MIAC schools? And aren’t most (except Carleton and maybe Macalester) generally recruiting from the same pool of upper Midwest high schools? Do the Catholic colleges have an advantage recruiting from Catholic HSs?