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The Ins and Outs of College Scholarships (Infographic)

The Numbers Game

We came across this great infographic and had to share it with you, our loyal fan base! It’s no secret that scholarships are hard to understand, which is why this particular graphic is so appealing. The authors took what many consider to be a completely confusing and foreign subject and broke it down into manageable, understandable, bits of information.
The authors found that in 2009-10 $199.2 billion dollars was distributed to students for tuition aid, an increase of $32 billion dollars from the previous year. They also found student-athletes were awarded a $2 billion dollar slice of that overall pie. Athletes received only 1% of the overall aid given in the 08-09 and 2009-10 years, a number I thought would be much larger given the attention college sports seem to garner.

Athletic Scholarships

My interests were further piqued when the graphic illustrated the amount of scholarship aid specific student-athletes received on average, a mere $10,409 dollars. The tuition during the same time per student-athlete averaged $20,000-$50,000 dollars. This means that on average a student-athlete was responsible for covering anywhere from 48%-79% of their education.

Title IX

With the advent of Title IX and the fact that universities have strict rules they need to follow to stay compliant, I find it interesting that the NCAA scholarship gap still has a 2% separation among males and females. There is a clear $188 million dollar gap between the two genders.

Soccer? Who Knew?

Football and basketball are revenue sports that make most of the money for the schools and usually cost the most to operate. A surprising number to me was the percentage of scholarship money that soccer teams are awarded. There are many teams spread out across D1 and D2, but they also have a low number of scholarships compared to athletes allowed on their roster.

Costs Passed on to Students

No matter how you slice it, financial aid and scholarships are an important part of giving our youth an opportunity at a higher education and a better tomorrow. The graphic took into account three separate aspects of financial giving: merit-based, financial need, and miscellaneous components.

Many colleges are in financial trouble, which dries up the merit-based public scholarships. To recover, they are hiking the fees on students, which drives up the cost on students and schools for the miscellaneous components–all that is left in the end is financial need-based scholarships that have to be paid back.

Basically, outside of private scholarship foundations, students are going to have an increasingly harder time each year finding ways to pay for college without taking out large student loans.

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