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What the article is saying is that more schools are awarding merit aid to athletes (non head count sports), which is fine but then the school has to make those awards available to all students.
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Absolutely. A school can’t “create” scholarships that are only given to athletes.
The same with dorms. They can’t create dorms that are only for athletes; this is to prevent a school from having a super-deluxe dorm for athletes only.
I have to laugh at the football dorm at my kids’ school. It’s very nice, but because they have to let non-athletes stay as well, the others are all male engineering students.
I’m sure that my kids’ undergrad finds that their automatic merit awards come in handy with some of their higher stats athletes who aren’t full head. What happens if the awards end up higher than COA?
I see what you’re saying about counting the whole $6k against the team if $3k is university need-based. Just another way to prevent schools from “playing games” with money.