What NCAA Division III schools excelled at athletics and academics last year?
Is it time for Division III to revisit its structure?
With 425 active members, NCAA Division III was the largest division in the NCAA in 2024-25. When the association voted in 1973 to split into three divisions, one of the key drivers was the ability of institutions to self-determine which division aligned best with their respective campus missions. Since the split into Division III, members have maintained a philosophy that, as higher education scholars Eric A. Moyen and John R. Thelin described in their 2024 book, College Sports: A History, “athletics were an integral part of a well-rounded college experience,” (Moyen & Thelin, 2024, p. 307).
A perception exists that Division III schools are more aligned than other divisions as they do not offer athletic scholarships and they, publicly at least, agree the priorities of Division III include “a well-rounded collegiate experience that involves a balance of rigorous academics, competitive athletics and the opportunity to pursue a multitude of other co-curricular and extracurricular opportunities.” As Division III has grown considerably over the past 50-plus years, many institutions have embraced the idea that athletics are not just part of a well-rounded college experience, but a key driver of desperately needed revenue, in the form of enrollment and tuition dollars, to sustain operations.
Consider the disparate sizes of Division III institutions, a mix of public regional universities and private liberal arts colleges. Enrollments in Division III range from the 267 undergraduates at Bryn Athyn College to the 28,491 enrolled at New York University (enrollment figures for 2023-24 from the Equity in Athletics Data Analysis website). Many institutions are under extreme financial pressures for operational survival, while others have rich endowments.
Nine Division III schools (Birmingham-Southern, Cabrini, Cazenovia, Finlandia, Fontbonne, Medaille, Northland, Rosemont, Wells) have announced closure or merger in the past few years. This financial pressure is further evidenced by the 65 Division III schools that received a financial grade of “D” from Forbes last fall.
While many Division III schools obsess over individual student headcount in order to ensure revenue, to the point where many institutions now have an undergraduate student body that has 44 percent or more athletes, a handful of schools appear to be successfully balancing the missions of academic and athletic excellence. Forty-seven Division III schools, just over 11% of DIII, achieved the highest levels of success in both academics and athletics in 2024-25. To measure this, I used the U.S. News & World Report’s (USNWR) annual surveys of the nation’s top 100 Liberal Arts Schools and top 100 National Universities as a proxy for academic excellence and the top 100 of the 2024-25 Learfield Directors’ Cup Standings, a measure of overall competitive athletic success based on NCAA postseason performances, as a proxy for athletic excellence.
A total of 92 Division III schools appear on one of USNWR’s top 100 lists, 75 Liberal Arts Colleges and 17 Universities, with slightly more than half also appearing on the Learfield Directors’ Cup list. Nearly three-quarters of all Division III schools - 324 - scored at least five points in the Directors’ Cup standings.
When I calculated this Venn diagram last October (using the 2024 USNWR rankings and the 2023-24 Learfield Directors’ Cup standings), 43 schools made the list, so this year’s list represents a 10 percent increase. However, of the 47 on this year’s list, 28 represent just four Division III conferences: New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC), University Athletic Association (UAA), Centennial Conference, and the Liberty League.
In fact, only 15 of the 36 Division III conferences had a school make the list, and seven of those only had one school qualify for the list. As the table below indicates, the NESCAC led the way with all 11 members on the list. A year ago, Connecticut College and Hamilton College had failed to crack the top 100 of the Directors’ Cup. The UAA was second with seven of eight members making the list (Brandeis University did not place in the Directors’ Cup), followed by the Centennial and Liberty conferences with five each. Four additional Centennial schools, and three Liberty schools, made the top 100 academic lists, but not the Directors’ Cup.
The Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC) grew from three to four as Augsburg College and St. John’s University joined Carleton College and Gustavus Adolphus College. St. Olaf College finished 105th in the Directors’ Cup, dropping off the list. The North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC) also grew as DePauw University joined Denison University and Kenyon College. The Southern Athletic Association (SAA) placed two - Centre College and the University of the South (Sewanee) - but also added Trinity (TX) University as a full member this academic year, effectively giving the SAA three.
Finally, the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC) had two consortiums placed in the Directors’ Cup top 100, Claremont-Mudd-Scripps and Pomona-Pitzer. Individually, all five of the academic colleges placed in USNWR’s top 100 Liberal Arts Colleges.
Many of the low enrolled campuses, such as the aforementioned Bryn Athyn College with 52 percent of its 267 students were athletes, turn to athletics as a way to sustain enrollment. Five years ago, Wittenberg University in Ohio reported 34.8 percent of its students as athletes, which grew to 54.21 percent in 2023-24. And, the school has announced it is adding three more sports (men’s and women’s wrestling and women’s flag football) in the past few weeks.
Based on my analysis of data from the 2023-24 EADA report, 61 of the 430 DIII institutions in 2023-24 reported at least 45 percent of its undergraduate student enrollment were athletes. Bethany College in West Virginia reported the highest percentage with 77 percent of its 639 total undergraduates as athletes. For the most part, these athlete-dependent schools are not necessarily competing academically against the elite private liberal arts colleges and universities with deep traditions and rich endowments. But, they all compete against one another athletically, under the large DIII tent.
The diversity of DIII institution type has long been a source of discussion, both among DIII administrators and academics. Writing in Reclaiming the Game: College Sports and Educational Values, William G. Bowen and Sarah A. Levin (2003) noted the need for schools to “have suitable competitors - institutions that share their philosophies, admissions practices, playing/practice rules, and educational priorities. Needed is an overall structure that reinforces, rather than undermines, their efforts” (p. 303). They even floated the idea of a new, in their words, “Division X”, emerging from Division III, essentially creating a Division IV. They outline possible goals and objectives for this new Division but maintain that “any new division should depend on self-selection; it should be based on whether a particular school does or does not want to play within the parameters of a somewhat more restrictive, more educationally oriented organizational structure” (Bowen & Levin, p, 307).
Stephen R. Lewis, Jr., long-time president of DIII Carleton College, advocated for reform of DIII even after he stepped away from the presidency. Speaking at the College Sports Project Integration Institute in June 2005, Lewis said, “Since there are very different interests of institutions within the current Division III, a new Division, comprising those institutions that would like to see intercollegiate athletics brought back into better balance with both the academic and the other co-curricular activities of our colleges and universities, still seems to me an outcome that could be highly beneficial” (Lewis, 2005, paragraph 10).
Earlier this week, an interview recorded during the 2025 NACDA Convention between DePauw athletics director Stevie Baker-Watson and College.town’s Anthony Grassi was posted on the Business of Small College Athletics website. In the final few minutes, Baker-Watson discusses how Division I roster caps might impact Division III and the athletic experience.
Baker-Watson intimated a potential Division IV might be close at hand. She suggested the schools who need 75 on a baseball roster or 40 on a softball roster for tuition revenue from sports will continue to do so. Those schools that “care about the experience are probably going to have a softball team with 25-30 and a baseball team with maybe 35-45,” Baker-Watson said.
“There was a conversation maybe 15 years ago, almost 20 years ago now, where they thought Division III needed to split into a Division IV,” Baker-Watson said. “I don’t think we would split into a Division IV, but I do think that there's a pocket of presidents and a reasonable number, a significant number of presidents, that are going to say we want to do things differently. So this may be that moment where that group of 80 to 100 to 120 schools actually branches off into something else that is more of their liking and more aligned with how they think as a group compared to the rest of the division.”
Glory Days is a Substack newsletter published by Stephen W. Dittmore, PhD, Dean of the Silverfield College of Education and Human Services at the University of North Florida. He is in his 23rd year in higher education, having worked at universities in all three NCAA Divisions, including 14 years at the University of Arkansas. His research on small college enrollment and athletics has been referenced in the Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed. He was previously a writer for Athletic Director U.
Researcher positionality: My son is a junior student-athlete at Centre College, one of the 47 schools cited on the list.