Rest in Peace: College Closings

Okay, I found the discussion of percentage of student athletes at a school and the pay-to-play phenomenon really intriguing. I went to this governmental website and downloaded the data for 4-year public and nonprofit private schools with a population under 5k.

https://ope.ed.gov/athletics/

I then did a little simple math (added the total # of unduplicated males and unduplicated females for the total # of athletes and then divided that by the # of undergrads) to get the percentage of undergrads who were athletes. And I’m excluding U. of Fort Lauderdale because it somehow has more athletes than undergrads and I’m not going deep enough into the rabbit hole to figure out why. But suffice it to say…


First, some frames of reference for this 2022 data (the most recent year available).

A few schools more familiar to CCers that are considered athlete-heavy are Williams (35% athletes), Amherst (32% athletes), and Middlebury (26%).

Here’s a summary of how the schools broke down:

  • 6 schools between 90-95%
  • 12 schools between 80-89%
  • 24 schools between 70-79%
  • 47 schools between 60-69%
  • 74 schools between 50-59%
  • 99 schools between 40-49%
  • 165 schools between 30-39%
  • 203 schools between 20-29%
  • 251 schools between 10-19%
  • 193 schools between 1-9%

Here are the athlete percentages at some schools mentioned upthread:

  • Wittenberg: 59%
  • Birmingham-Southern: 47%
  • William Jewell: 62%
  • Keystone: 40%
  • Mount Mercy: 50%
  • Eastern Nazarene: 50%

So now in researching schools for financial viability, I think that athlete percentage would be a good one to include. And it’s also something to look at for people interested in smaller schools…when more than half of a school’s population is a varsity athlete, it will almost certainly have a very different culture than one where varsity athletes make up a much smaller percentage.

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