How many NCAA schools are 44 percenters?

Should more DI institutions consider transition to DIII?

Last month I was interviewed by Joe Scalzo of Crain’s Cleveland Business for a story about the reliance of small colleges and universities on athletes to boost enrollment. While it is behind a paywall, I encourage you to read it as Scalzo accurately balances the quandary for many of these schools. He focuses on NE Ohio colleges quoting leaders from Lake Erie College and John Carroll University, two schools striving to balance overall enrollment and the percent of their student body who are athletes.

In an attempt to draw an arbitrary, but somewhat informed, line in the sand that represents an inflection point for many universities, I wrote in June that institutions that exceed 44 percent athletes were somewhat tenuous. Of the seven schools that announced closures last year, all but one (College of St. Rose) were at or exceeded the 44 percent line of demarcation. All six of the schools with fewer than 1,000 undergraduates met the threshold. 

For better or worse, that has become my talking point, as evidenced by the quotes Scalzo chose to use. 

It was not until I read a Washington Post story from Jesse Dougherty last week about the role women’s flag football will play at DI Mount St. Mary’s University in Maryland, a quaint little school 15 minutes or so from Gettysburg, Pa., that I really paused to wonder how many schools, across all three NCAA divisions, are part of the 44 Percenters. The Mount, as the school refers to itself, is at 42 percent athletes according to its athletic director. My good friend, Dr. Karen Weaver from the University of Pennsylvania, saw the overlap between my writing and the WaPo story and has invited Dougherty and me to be guests on Trustees and Presidents: A Podcast for University Leaders about College Athletics this week to discuss this topic.

So, in preparation for that conversation, I downloaded participation and enrollment data from the Equity in Athletics Data Analysis site, and ran a few Excel formulas to see how many schools are 44 Percenters. The data is based on the 2022-23 year, the most recent in the EADA database, and focuses on unduplicated participants in athletics divided by the reported number of total undergraduates. Unduplicated athletes are defined with this example: a cross country athlete who also competes for the indoor and outdoor track teams counts as one athlete, not three, even though the NCAA counts those as three different sports.

Here is what I found, nothing of which suggests any of the schools cited below are in danger of closing.

Of the 354 Division I schools in the database, only Presbyterian College (51.1%) and Queens University of Charlotte (44.1%) meet the threshold. Mount St. Mary’s reported 31.8% athletes (553 of 1,741 undergraduates), the sixth-highest percentage in DI, according to the EADA data.

If The Mount is really at 42 percent as reported in Dougherty’s article, that would suggest either a 10 percent increase in percent of athletes as students, or it was not differentiating unduplicated athletes. In the 2022-23 data from EADA, Mount St. Mary’s reported 709 overall athletes, but only 553 unduplicated athletes. If we used 709 athletes, the percent of athletes at Mount St. Mary’s jumps from 31.8 percent to 40.7 percent. So, it is possible that both figures can be true.

At the Division II level, 32 of the 286 schools in the database are 44 Percenters, led by Erskine College in South Carolina at 94.5 percent. Two others, Emmanuel College in Georgia (89.9%) and Wheeling University in West Virginia (88.2%), exhibited extremely high percentages. Three DII schools in the database (Bloomfield College, College of St. Rose, Notre Dame College) have either closed or merged with another institution and are, therefore, not included.

Lake Erie College in the Cleveland area, the focus of Scalzo’s article, was fourth-highest at 75.7 percent athletes, though, according to quotes in the article, its president seems intent on lowering that figure below 50 percent.

Finally, at the Division III level, 61 of the 408 schools in the database are members of the 44 percent club. Four schools (Birmingham-Southern College, Clarks Summit University, Eastern Nazarene College, Wells College) have already closed and are, therefore, not included. Olivet College in Michigan has the highest percentage, with 83.4 percent athletes.

In total, just 95 of 1,049 NCAA schools (9%) are members of the 44 Percenters. At the Division III level, however, nearly 15% of its institutions belong to this group.

44 Percenters by NCAA Division

This is not to say that having a large athlete population on campus is inherently bad. Division III stresses as part of its mission the goal of achieving academic excellence and competitive success.

But something that intrigues me as I evaluate these numbers is this: What really separates some Division I schools from being Division III? Consider the University of Hartford which announced in 2021 its intent to transition from DI to DIII in order to better align with “the University’s mission and goals of creating exceptional academic, co-curricular, and wellness experiences for all students.”

In its current EADA filing (what EADA calls the 2022 Survey Year), the school reports 3,678 students and 276 athletes. In the 2019 Survey Year, when Hartford was DI and pre-covid, the school reported 4,247 students and 280 unduplicated athletes. In the 2019 Survey Year, Hartford reported $17,725,051 in athletic expenses for its 280 athletes. For the 2022 Survey Year, the campus reported $10,017,370 in athletic expenses for its 276 athletes. 

With my standard caveat that I know no one at Hartford and am not privy to any internal strategic planning conversations, it appears that while the campus has lost 600 total students in the past four years, it has shed $7.7 million in athletic expenses while providing nearly the same number of participation opportunities as a DIII school as it did as a DI school. Hartford was not close to being a 44 Percenter when it was DI and it still is not now that it is DIII.

The average DIII school enrolled 2,368 undergraduates in the EADA 2022 Survey Year with an average of 411 athletes (17.4%). Inside Division I, 30 institutions enrolled fewer than the average DIII school. Presbyterian was the smallest (873 students), followed by Chicago State (935) and Mississippi Valley State (1,037). For comparison, Presbyterian enrolled two fewer students than Albertus Magnus College in New Haven, Conn, but had nearly 200 fewer athletes (446 at Presbyterian compared with 265 at Albertus Magnus).

Due to the hierarchical nature of the NCAA divisions, does membership in Division I equate to a better academic reputation for an institution? I would submit the answer is a resounding no. Yet many schools continue to chase Division I, St. Peter’s (NJ)-type moments. St. Peter’s, by the way, has one of the 15 smallest DI enrollments with fewer than 1,800 students, 13.5 percent of which are athletes.

As the landscape of higher education and college athletics changes rapidly, would certain DI schools be better served in Division III? That is an answer only those institutions and their boards of trustees are in a position to answer. Given the pressures on higher education enrollment in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, and the challenges associated with being athletically competitive in Division I, it certainly seems like a conversation worth having.