NCAA Full Cost of Attendance Stipends Being Implemented

By Daniel Tran | May 14, 2015

In the latest step towards collegiate athletes being able to feed themselves, The NCAA has approved the use of funds to provide full cost of attendance stipends to cover incidental costs of students. The Colorado State Rams are the latest school to take part.

In December of 2014, the ACC submitted three proposals in accordance to the NCAA Division I autonomy process. One of those proposals called for the inclusion of the cost of attendance in the scholarships that were being awarded to student-athletes, showing progress towards a system where athletes would be able to afford to eat every meal.

In a 79-1 vote amongst the 80 universities in the Power 5 conferences (Pac-12, SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, ACC) in January, it was determined that NCAA Division I schools can provide their student-athletes with a supplemental stipend to cover the costs of attendance at their respective universities. Some schools have been quick to provide this monumental service.

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Colorado State is one of the schools that will use $654,000 from its budget to hand out stipends to its student-athletes in order to supplement their scholarships and enhance the college athletic experience. They will be spreading that large sum of money among a maximum number of 214 scholarships that the university is allowed to offer this year.

Each university determines the cost of attendance individually. As such, Colorado State will be handing out $2,400 per year to in-state full scholarship athletes, and $3,100 per year to out-of-state full scholarship athletes. Given that there are two, sixteen-week semesters at Colorado State, that amounts to $75 per academic week for in-state athletes, and approximately $97 per week for out-of-state athletes.

This is hardly an extravagant amount where student-athletes can buy the latest overpriced sneaker or add a 42-inch television to their dormitory, but it is enough for them to never have to go hungry while they are laying their bodies on the line for the Colorado State Rams in their respective sports.

“For decades, a full scholarship has been defined as tuition, room, board, books and fees,” Colorado State Director of Athletics Joe Parker explained. “The demands to balance academics and athletics have grown over that period. Most of our students simply do not have time to engage in part-time or summer employment to supplement the costs of their education. The new stipend is important and helps to address the incidental expenses associated with attending CSU.”

The Colorado State Rams are not alone. The Nebraska Cornhuskers are also providing their student-athletes who play in football, men’s and women’s basketball, and volleyball with a $3,600 stipend for the academic year. Nebraska is allocating money from their budget, which grossed $86.9 million in 2013, to the cause. The Omaha World-Herald estimates that the cost of attendance for all sports will be just under $1 million for the year.

After multiple stories of student-athletes unable to provide themselves with the basic need of being fed adequately becoming for prevalent in recent years, the NCAA’s latest effort in at least providing athletes with enough money to eat properly is a huge step in fairly treating these young men and women who drive so much revenue to the universities themselves.

Student-athletes playing in the big-ticket sports, like football or basketball, will never be paid what they are actually worth to the university because the institutions themselves will go broke, but at least there is some progress towards these athletes being able to live properly and at least have an opportunity to learn about budgeting and resourcefulness with the limited amount of funds they are about to receive.

This new stipend program is not mandatory for every school to implement, but it definitely gives a lot of leverage when recruiting students when you can offer stipends for food and travel. Understandably, forking over your own money for stipends is a huge cost for some of these schools, especially the smaller ones, but for the long-term betterment of these young athletes, more schools should bite the budgetary bullet and provide these students enough money for their basic needs.

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