Diversifying Through Football

You'd be hard pressed to find a college or university now that has not made the ethnic and socioeconomic diversification of its student body a high priority. Institutions have stepped up their recruitment efforts, reaching out more aggressively to students from underrepresented racial and other groups, expanding their financial aid offerings to low-income students, and bolstering as well their strategies for retaining academically underprepared students. Gone, presumably, are the days when the primary way an African American male could catch the eye of a college was with a sweet jump shot or throwing a football 60 yards.

Right? Not so fast.

Data drawn from the National Collegiate Athletic Association's annual survey of graduation rates, analyzed by Inside Higher Ed, show that scholarship athletes make up at least 20 percent of the full-time black male undergraduates at 96 of the nearly 330 colleges that play sports in Division I, the NCAA's top competitive level. At 46 of those colleges, according to the data, which are from 2005-6, at least a third of the black male population play a sport. And at 31 one of them, football players alone make up at least a quarter of the black undergraduate men.

All told, male athletes make up about 3 percent of full-time male students at Division I institutions.

The trend is most evident at two types of institutions. The first is public universities in states with relatively small black populations, where the institutions recruit more or less locally or regionally for their general student bodies, but participate in the national recruitment system that has grown up around big-time sports over decades. So state universities like Boise State University (where 34 of the 92 full-time black male undergraduates in 2005-6 were athletes), Montana State University (35 of 40), and Western Carolina University (77 of 211) jump out. Yet the proportions can also be surprisingly high at major public universities in states with sizable black populations, such as the University of Georgia, (21 percent), and the University of Colorado at Boulder (28 percent).

The other category of colleges where the proportions of black athletes are highest is private institutions, mostly those that have selective admission standards and are small compared to other sports powers, yet still try to compete with the big boys. This includes institutions like Northwestern University (where 43 of the 163 full-time black male undergraduates are athletes), Lehigh (31 of 78), Rice (47 of 99) and Wake Forest (69 of 128) Universities, and the University of Tulsa (68 of 95), among others. (One other group of selective private institutions that competes in Division I -- those in the Ivy League -- are excluded from the data below because the NCAA collects information only about scholarship athletes, and the Ivies do not award sports scholarships. The same is true of the U.S. military academies.)

The question of what it means for these colleges (and for their students) if their ratios of black male athletes to black male students are high is a complex and contested one. Officials at many of the institutions where the proportions are high said almost to a one that they would like their proportions (of athletes to students) to be lower and that they were working hard to step up their recruitment and retention of black (and other minority) students generally -- in some cases mirroring strategies athletics departments have perfected.

Some argue that their institutions should be judged not on the relative number of black athletes and other students they are bringing to their campuses, but on how successfully they are educating and graduating those students -- and most, not surprisingly, said they are doing a good job.

But some advocates for minority students are troubled when they look at the numbers, which they say suggest that some colleges are more interested in recruiting black men with exceptional athletic talent than they are mere hard-working students. "It's absolutely shameful that these institutions obviously could do such a great job of expending the effort to recruit black male athletes but can't seem to get their arms around the recruitment of other black male students," says Shaun R. Harper, an assistant professor in the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education.

"At a lot of institutions," he says, "there's a very limited expenditure of effort" toward recruiting black students generally, there's no strategy, there are no real goals that are written down. Yet when it comes to the recruitment of black male athletes, all those things are in place. It's hard not to think that that's because they're interested in winning, so they're going to put forth the effort to recruit students who will enable them to win."

Adds Kevin Carey, research and policy manager at Education Sector, an education think tank: "If a very large percentage of your students of color are athletes, what that suggests is that you’re using your athletics program as a proxy for achieving your diversity goals. That's different from an institution that both pursues its athletics goals and also tries to recruit and retain significant numbers of students of color who are aren’t athletes."

Data showing low enrollments of black male students are unlikely to shock anyone who's been paying attention in higher education; the most recent national data, from 2004, show African Americans making up 11.7 percent of all undergraduates in American colleges and about 9.5 percent of undergraduate men, slightly less than their representation in the U.S. population generally. Black students are disproportionately overrepresented, as well, at historically black universities and community colleges. So given that context, the fact that the latest NCAA statistics show that 9.4 percent of male students at Division I campuses are black is not surprising.

But when the data are unpacked by individual college, and contrasted to the number and proportion of black athletes on those campuses, the results can be eye-popping and raise some interesting issues, for athletics departments, for specific colleges, and for higher education as a whole. Some of the issues differ depending on the type of institutions. At public universities where the numbers are starkest -- where many or even most of the black male students are athletes -- the situation arises in part because the institutions recruit nationally for athletes, but draw students generally almost entirely from their states, which may have relatively few minority citizens.

At the University of Nevada at Reno, for example, 63 of the 99 full-time black male undergraduates on the campus in 2005-6 were athletes, and 57 of them were football players. Officials there note that the undergraduate student body is representative of the black population in the northern Nevada region that the university serves. The local county high school district from which Reno draws 50 percent of its enrollment graduated all of 70 black students (of a total of 2,800 graduates) in 2005, says Melisa Choroszy, associate vice president for enrollment services at Nevada. And only 35-40 percent of them meet the university's admissions standards, she says.

Between half and two-thirds of the university's scholarship athletes, on the other hand, are from out of state, says Sandie Niedergall, director of compliance services in Nevada's athletics department.

"One of the great things that athletics is able to do is to seek out talent in a geographic way across the country that we don't have as much of an option to do because of financial constraints," says Choroszy. "Athletics is able to help us with the greater diversity picture we strive for."

The University of Oregon faces a similar situation. The state's African American population hovers in the 2 percent range, as does the black proportion of the undergraduate student body at the university. Of the 137 black undergrads on the campus in 2005-6, 48 (or 35 percent) were scholarship athletes and 38 played football on Oregon's team, which this year ranked among the nation's best.

"From the data, it seems obvious that lots of African-American male students see athletics as a major pathway to college," says Charles Martinez, vice provost for institutional equity and diversity at Oregon. The challenge, he says, "is not to have a reliance on a single pathway" for first generation, low-income, or minority students. "Higher education is just coming around to the realization that for effective outreach [to underrepresented students], we can’t start in high school. That's something that athletics [departments] figured out a long time ago."

The Picture at Private Colleges

At the selective private universities that try to compete in football and basketball in the stratosphere of Division I, the issues are slightly different. Most of them have significantly smaller student bodies than their public university peers, so if they sponsor football teams, and recruit meaningful numbers of black athletes to populate them, the black players will tend to skew their overall black enrollment numbers more than would be true at a larger institution.

In addition, the admission standards at many of the selective private institutions are such that the pools of African American students who qualify academically are relatively small, especially if the institutions lean significantly on standardized test scores. Most selective colleges and universities tend to bend their admissions standards more (proportionally) for athletes than they do for other categories of students, though officials at the colleges steadfastly reject the notion that they are doing a disservice to the athletes, or to their institutions, by opening their doors to them -- far from it.

"In our case, black male student athletes graduate at a higher rate than our black male students," said David Shi, president of Furman University, where 46 of the 77 full-time black male undergraduates in 2005-6 were athletes, and fully half played football. "We have never had a problem with the academic performance of our football players in general, much less our African-American football players. We've had the good fortune of being able to recruit some very high performing student athletes and not feel worried that somehow we’re compromising the integrity of the institution."

Shi bristles at the assertion that athletes make up a large proportion of Furman's black male students creates equity or other issues, not only because they succeed academically but because they are so well incorporated into the campus. "We do not have distinctively different cultures, there is no separate athletic dorm, so the fact that an African American student is here on a football scholarship does not in any way diminish their contribution to the institution. They are terrific role models not only as athletes but as students and as citizens."

Other college officials and most experts on campus diversity agree that one important part of the equation in assessing the relative representation of black athletes and other students is how well they fare academically and otherwise. "I would want to look at this as an opportunity -- these students have excelled at something that gave them an opportunity to go to college," says Ross Wiener, who heads the policy team at Education Trust, which promotes educational equity for low-income and minority students.

"The key question is whether that promise is kept -- whether they are just supported as athletes, or whether they also get supported as students. That probably varies from place to place. If the athletic achievement has opened up doors to these whole other world for these students, that's great. But if not, if the universities use them as athletes or ignore them as students, that's a different story."

That picture will vary by institution, but the NCAA's aggregate data show that black male athletes in Division I graduate at a higher rate than do all black male students at Division I colleges (48 percent to 37 percent in the association's most recent report). "At the end of the day, the goal of higher education is to provide a degree to as many students as possible," says Charlotte Westerhaus, vice president for diversity and inclusion at the NCAA. "The reason I am not troubled by these numbers is that these student athletes are graduating at a very high rate."

(Comparisons of graduation rates for scholarship athletes and for all other students, regardless of race, must take into account two facts: that athletes are generally shielded from the financial difficulties that force many normal students -- especially those from underrepresented groups -- off track for graduation, and that athletes tend to benefit from exceptional levels of academic support from their athletics departments.)

Some campus administrators say they recognize the possibility that having a large number of their black male students be athletes can diminish the experience for black students, especially if the athletes aren't integrated into campus life. At Nevada, "we make tremendous efforts to make sure that the student athletes are part and parcel of the population on campus," says Reginald Chhen Stewart, director of the Center for Student Cultural Diversity there. "The coaches gave them release time from [team meetings] to attend the [Black Student Organization] meetings so that they were integrated," for example.

Stewart acknowledges, though, that having many or most of an institution's black men be athletes can add to a stereotype that has long plagued black men on college campuses. "It's just one of the ills of higher education that people assume if you're a black man on campus that you're an athlete," he says.

He and other campus officials say that, ironically, colleges may begin to break down that perception by borrowing some of the tactics that athletics departments have long embraced and using them to bolster their recruitment of black and other minority students who aren't athletes.

"Coaches have been doing it a long time, and we might learn from them," says Paul Orehovec, vice president for enrollment management and continuing studies at the University of Miami, where athletes make up 26 percent of the university's black male undergrads. "I see my role and my staff's role as beating the bushes in any way we can to recruit good black students, and we've begun walking the halls of some of the predominantly black schools" like coaches have been doing for years.

The university has begun working with the principal and other top officials at Miami's inner-city Northwestern High School -- whose football team was ranked among the nation's best by USA Today -- to recruit students, not athletes. Miami hosts a dinner on its campus for the school's top-ranked students, and has been driving home the message that "if they meet the academic qualifications, there will be financial aid available to them."

Harper, the Penn professor who last year studied the state of black male students at public flagship universities for the Dellums Commission, agrees that there are possibilities for university admissions officers to learn from sports recruiters. "They should be saying, Wow, you guys seem to be particularly good at recruiting this particular population that is otherwise missing from the campus. Is there something we can learn from your approach." Coaches "go to a kid's house, sit in his living room with his parents, and the parents get excited and the kids get excited." He wonders if campus recruiters couldn't do the same, though he acknowledges that such an approach would only work if the black male non-athletes had "advocates" with as much sway in the admissions office as top coaches tend to have.

But Harper believes that colleges and universities need to do much more to prove that they are as willing and able to recruit, enroll and graduate black male students who can't dunk a basketball. More aggressive outreach, recruitment and financial aid efforts aimed at black male students are a must, but he would go further.

In his paper last year, he wrote that the the "NCAA should consider a policy requiring that racial representation on any sports team should minimally correspond to a certain percentage of undergraduate student enrollments at the institution. For example, if black males comprise four percent of the undergraduate students on a campus, their representation on an intercollegiate sports team should not be permitted to exceed a certain percentage (e.g., 20 percent, which would be five times more than black men in the general student population). The introduction of this policy will surely compel university admissions officers to more aggressively recruit black male students who are not brought to the institution to play sports."

While such a policy is a long shot, even some campus officials who say they're doing everything they can to bolster their minority enrollments admit that data like the ones below can prove a useful stimulant.

"Numbers like this just keep us honest," says Stewart of at Nevada-Reno. "It's all part of the business of education. Sometimes the numbers look really outstanding, and sometimes they show you what you need to work on."

Numbers and Proportions of Black Male Students and Athletes at Division I Colleges, 2005-6

 

Institution	Number of Male Students	Number of Black Male Students	% of Male Students Who Are Black	Number of Black Male Athletes	% of Black Male Students Who Are Athletes	Number of Black Male Football Players	Number of Male Athletes
Alabama A&M U		1,984		1,904		96%		122		6%		72		139
Alabama State U		1,598		1,556		97%		129		8%		64		144
Alcorn State U		1,029		951		92%		121		13%		71		144
American U		2,114		102		5%		8		8%		0		72
Appalachian State U		6,131		219		4%		63		29%		36		200
Arizona State U		23,007		827		4%		49		6%		38		190
Arkansas State U		2,971		444		15%		75		17%		56		163
Auburn U		8,975		669		7%		78		12%		58		213
Austin Peay State U		2,327		365		16%		13		4%		0		67
Ball State U		7,389		340		5%		49		14%		38		170
Baylor U		4,878		321		7%		68		21%		49		163
Belmont U		1,414		45		3%		7		16%		0		97
Bethune-Cookman C		1,228		1,115		91%		131		12%		81		191
Birmingham-Southern C		564		26		5%		10		38%		0		95
Boise State U		5,005		92		2%		34		37%		25		165
Boston College		4,506		261		6%		44		17%		33		146
Boston U		7,097		167		2%		6		4%		0		99
Bowling Green State U		6,676		493		7%		58		12%		49		179
Bradley U		2,391		91		4%		11		12%		0		73
Brigham Young U		13,837		73		1%		20		27%		16		256
Brown U		2,737		166		6%		n/a		n/a		n/a		n/a
Bucknell U		1,728		54		3%		17		31%		11		93
Butler U		1,351		31		2%		2		6%		0		103
California Poly State U San Luis Obispo		9,362		118		1%		37		31%		25		216
California State U Long Beach		11,310		536		5%		23		4%		0		108
California State U Fresno		7,268		399		5%		68		17%		45		201
California State U Fullerton		8,932		335		4%		17		5%		0		109
California State U Northridge		8,444		666		8%		30		5%		2		140
California State U Sacramento		7,529		472		6%		40		8%		24		161
Campbell U		1,172		87		7%		14		16%		0		110
Canisius C		1,431		65		5%		5		8%		0		99
Centenary C*		341		22		6%		8		36%		0		75
Central Connecticut State U		3,648		313		9%		23		7%		15		97
Central Michigan U		7,525		353		5%		62		18%		47		180
Charleston Southern U		851		211		25%		52		25%		30		150
Chicago State U		1,019		818		80%		24		3%		0		59
Citadel		1,979		133		7%		61		46%		43		106
Clemson U		7,596		474		6%		69		15%		48		233
Cleveland State U		2,597		441		17%		20		5%		0		120
Coastal Carolina U		2,937		352		12%		67		19%		50		206
Colgate U		1,345		66		5%		31		47%		17		138
C of Charleston		3,177		169		5%		8		5%		0		89
C of the Holy Cross		1,267		53		4%		23		43%		18		90
C of William and Mary		2,522		130		5%		32		25%		26		157
Colorado State U		9,109		190		2%		51		27%		38		143
Columbia U-Barnard C		3,641		193		5%		n/a		n/a		n/a		n/a
Coppin State C		791		765		97%		43		6%		0		55
Cornell U		6,762		236		3%		n/a		n/a		n/a		n/a
Creighton U		1,500		42		3%		13		31%		0		115
Dartmouth C		2,002		131		7%		n/a		n/a		n/a		n/a
Davidson C		840		47		6%		1		2%		98		0
Delaware State U		1,208		993		82%		100		10%		59		146
DePaul U		4,884		305		6%		16		5%		0		82
Drake U		1,255		44		4%		12		27%		0		77
Drexel U		6,130		289		5%		12		4%		0		134
Duke U		3,267		244		7%		53		22%		46		179
Duquesne U		2,163		92		4%		11		12%		0		113
East Carolina U		6,434		792		12%		77		10%		58		198
East Tennessee State U		3,458		120		3%		19		16%		3		84
Eastern Illinois U		4,029		277		7%		57		21%		35		211
Eastern Kentucky U		4,249		203		5%		49		24%		37		141
Eastern Michigan U		5,252		906		17%		60		7%		52		207
Eastern Washington U		3,431		137		4%		25		18%		18		136
Elon U		1,801		126		7%		50		40%		38		171
Fairfield U		1,431		19		1%		7		37%		0		63
Fairleigh Dickinson U Metro*		836		143		17%		17		12%		0		78
Florida A&M U		3,922		3,689		94%		96		3%		53		104
Florida Atlantic U		4,960		715		14%		61		9%		46		163
Florida International U		7,686		981		13%		69		7%		50		159
Florida State U		11,626		1,080		9%		85		8%		64		201
Fordham U		2,854		141		5%		50		35%		34		170
Furman U		1,172		77		7%		46		60%		38		168
Gardner-Webb U		1,198		142		12%		45		32%		34		86
George Mason U		6,434		392		6%		14		4%		0		99
George Washington U		3,915		163		4%		12		7%		0		100
Georgetown U		3,007		188		6%		35		19%		21		158
Georgia Inst of Technology		7,860		500		6%		97		19%		68		227
Georgia Southern U		6,609		1,349		20%		70		5%		51		167
Georgia State U		5,327		1,178		22%		19		2%		0		100
Gonzaga U		1,923		27		1%		4		15%		0		69
Grambling State U		1,938		1,811		93%		122		7%		72		135
Hampton U		1,922		1,781		93%		93		5%		60		99
Harvard U		3,389		229		7%		n/a		n/a		n/a
High Point U		943		146		15%		20		14%		0		35
Hofstra U		3,675		315		9%		45		14%		35		200
Howard U		2,539		2,186		86%		144		7%		86		154
Idaho State U		2,985		65		2%		37		57%		30		128
Illinois State U		7,015		341		5%		46		13%		33		170
Indiana State U		3,440		367		11%		50		14%		36		141
Indiana U Bloomington		13,371		536		4%		63		12%		41		240
Indiana U.-Purdue U		3,027		124		4%		9		7%		0		93
Indiana U-Purdue U-Indianapolis		5,084		398		8%		12		3%		0		83
Iona C		1,420		102		7%		9		9%		0		91
Iowa State U		10,895		310		3%		54		17%		41		159
Jackson State U		2,148		2,047		95%		142		7%		76		150
Jacksonville State U		2,537		609		24%		65		11%		50		153
Jacksonville U		973		151		16%		8		5%		0		83
James Madison U		5,780		204		4%		70		34%		58		154
Kansas State U		11,350		370		3%		50		14%		35		172
Kent State U		6,181		407		7%		66		16%		46		191
La Salle U		1,486		112		8%		11		10%		0		110
Lafayette C		1,198		71		6%		30		42%		26		94
Lamar U		2,848		571		20%		16		3%		0		71
Lehigh U		2,724		78		3%		31		40%		26		124
Liberty U		4,802		492		10%		44		9%		31	164
Lipscomb U	899	38	4%	10	26%	0	91
Long Island U Brooklyn	1,268	410	32%	22	5%	0	80
Louisiana State U	11,359	791	7%	76	10%	56	195
Louisiana Tech U	3,931	539	14%	94	17%	64	172
Loyola College (Md)	1,472	55	4%	9	16%	0	72
Loyola Marymount U	2,206	128	6%	9	7%	0	78
Loyola U (Ill)	2,790	104	4%	15	14%	0	72
Manhattan C	1,381	25	2%	14	56%	0	110
Marist C	1,843	66	4%	10	15%	0	110
Marquette U	3,365	125	4%	8	6%	0	70
Marshall U	3,581	224	6%	58	26%	47	164
McNeese State U	2,636	469	18%	62	13%	45	161
Mercer U	1,217	183	15%	8	4%	0	83
Miami U	6,522	204	3%	38	19%	28	244
Michigan State U	14,755	1,005	7%	66	7%	45	254
Middle Tennessee State U	8,217	889	11%	87	10%	64	177
Mississippi State U	5,840	899	15%	91	10%	65	193
Mississippi Valley State U	800	735	92%	106	14%	71	128
Missouri State U	5,595	154	3%	44	29%	35	221
Monmouth U (NJ)	1,769	86	5%	23	27%	9	138
Montana State U Bozeman	4,995	40	1%	35	88%	28	133
Morehead State U	2,123	94	4%	10	11%	0	78
Morgan State U	2,205	2,043	93%	85	4%	54	92
Mount St. Mary's U	611	41	7%	19	46%	0	111
Murray State U	3,081	182	6%	52	29%	41	132
New Mexico	4,573	156	3%	50	32%	37	142
State U
Niagara U	1,123	43	4%	9	21%	0	96
Nicholls State U	1,981	327	17%	51	16%	43	128
Norfolk State U	1,681	1,518	90%	97	6%	60	134
North Carolina	4,210	3,876	92%	112	3%	65	122
A&T State U
North Carolina	10,901	854	8%	78	9%	56	217
State U
Northeastern U	7,209	343	5%	31	9%	23	165
Northern Arizona U	4,465	104	2%	27	26%	19	107
Northern Illinois U	7,950	763	10%	48	6%	37	198
Northwestern	2,077	614	30%	75	12%	50	147
State U
Northwestern U	4,787	163	3%	43	26%	38	197
Oakland U	3,681	248	7%	3	1%	0	45
Ohio State U	17,596	1,002	6%	63	6%	41	339
Ohio U	7,671	252	3%	44	17%	34	198
Oklahoma State U	8,645	299	3%	75	25%	61	202
Old Dominion U	4,501	792	18%	12	2%	0	98
Oral Roberts U	976	150	15%	16	11%	0	80
Oregon State U	7,260	122	2%	46	38%	35	191
Pennsylvania State U	18,013	590	3%	60	10%	44	290
Pepperdine U	1,128	70	6%	5	7%	0	68
Portland State U	5,025	193	4%	24	12%	18	86
Prairie View A&M U	2,615	2,408	92%	103	4%	65	121
Princeton U	2,548	175	7%	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
Providence C	1,693	25	1%	7	28%	0	78
Purdue U	17,790	548	3%	66	12%	47	222
Quinnipiac C	2,039	44	2%	4	9%	0	116
Radford U	3,344	187	6%	23	12%	0	94
Rice U	1,539	99	6%	47	47%	35	161
Rider U	1,493	124	8%	18	15%	0	135
Robert Morris U	1,759	134	8%	27	20%	11	139
Rutgers U	11,920	846	7%	89	11%	60	267
Sacred Heart U	1,478	72	5%	4	6%	4	37
Saint Francis C (Pa)	494	57	12%	28	49%	13	29
Saint Joseph's U (Pa)	1,988	64	3%	13	20%	0	130
Saint Louis U	3,193	131	4%	7	5%	0	82
Sam Houston State U	4,470	658	15%	59	9%	43	171
Samford U	976	61	6%	35	57%	30	148
San Diego State U	8,896	337	4%	49	15%	38	168
San Diego, U. of	1,888	50	3%	6	12%	0	69
San Jose State U.	8,424	428	5%	56	13%	46	161
Santa Clara U	1,995	52	3%	14	27%	0	101
Savannah State U	1,017	964	95%	66	7%	34	79
Seton Hall U	2,235	169	8%	16	9%	0	94
Siena C	1,322	25	2%	8	32%	0	106
South Carolina State U	1,582	1,545	98%	97	6%	74	107
Southeast Missouri	3,662	312	9%	59	19%	39	156
State U
Southeastern Louisiana U	4,548	661	15%	72	11%	48	170
Southern Illinois U Carbondale	8,355	1,237	15%	67	5%	48	184
Southern Methodist U	3,328	190	6%	61	32%	52	150
Southern U Baton Rouge	3,121	2,926	94%	144	5%	61	161
Southern Utah U	2,916	39	1%	17	44%	10	117
St. Bonaventure U	1,033	34	3%	4	12%	0	92
St. Francis College (NY)	1,078	163	15%	15	9%	0	74
St. John's U. (NY)	4,868	660	14%	15	2%	0	103
St. Mary's C	899	61	7%	11	18%	2	100
of California
St. Peter's C	911	202	22%	22	11%	0	83
Stanford U	3,436	335	10%	65	19%	39	366
State U of New York Albany	5,570	374	7%	19	5%	3	94
State U of New York Binghamton	5,551	192	3%	11	6%	0	125
State U of New York Buffalo	9,116	519	6%	63	12%	44	206
State U of New York Stony Brook	6,648	481	7%	19	4%	10	139
Stephen F. Austin State U	3,951	610	15%	62	10%	41	156
Stetson U	895	30	3%	9	30%	0	77
Syracuse U	5,294	277	5%	64	23%	52	172
Temple U	9,584	1,165	12%	72	6%	54	187
Tennessee State U	2,098	1,827	87%	75	4%	51	85
Tennessee Technological U	3,499	172	5%	45	26%	36	144
Texas A&M U College Station	18,402	443	2%	79	18%	59	237
Texas A&M U Corpus Christi	3,174	92	3%	16	17%	0	66
Texas Christian U	3,621	194	5%	59	30%	40	196
Texas Southern U	411	391	95%	126	32%	61	144
Texas State U	8,315	389	5%	67	17%	50	189
San Marcos
Texas Tech U	11,396	390	3%	68	17%	46	191
Towson U	4,791	410	9%	48	12%	37	173
Troy U	5,121	1,321	26%	82	6%	60	177
Tulane U**
U of Akron	5,646	635	11%	56	9%	43	181
U of Alabama Birmingham	3,094	717	23%	82	11%	64	175
U of Alabama Tuscaloosa	7,421	667	9%	76	11%	56	198
U of Arizona	11,491	354	3%	56	16%	46	190
U of Arkansas Fayetteville	5,812	282	5%	76	27%	57	188
U of Arkansas Little Rock	2,242	537	24%	6	1%	0	17
U of Arkansas Pine Bluff	1,260	1,198	95%	86	7%	57	97
U of California Berkeley	10,816	292	3%	61	21%	41	267
U of California Los Angeles	10,794	311	3%	66	21%	44	257
U of California Riverside	6,496	297	5%	19	6%	0	102
U of California	8,080	177	2%	14	8%	0	171
Santa Barbara
U of California Irvine	9,507	184	2%	14	8%	0	154
U of Central Florida	12,819	893	7%	58	6%	46	188
U of Cincinnati	7,479	578	8%	67	12%	42	215
U of Colorado Boulder	12,433	228	2%	63	28%	49	160
U of Connecticut	7,131	367	5%	77	21%	53	182
U of Dayton	3,476	137	4%	11	8%	0	79
U of Delaware	6,259	320	5%	49	15%	38	239
U of Denver	2,081	27	1%	6	22%	0	119
U of Detroit Mercy	798	147	18%	19	13%	0	67
U of Evansville	869	18	2%	3	17%	0	77
U of Florida	14,615	1,075	7%	86	8%	59	236
U of Georgia	9,725	429	4%	88	21%	67	210
U of Hartford	2,345	205	9%	7	3%	0	59
U of Hawaii At Manoa	5,255	86	2%	24	28%	20	174
U of Houston	9,075	1,146	13%	79	7%	49	173
U of Idaho	4,562	61	1%	30	49%	26	125
U of Illinois Chicago	6,344	371	6%	22	6%	0	129
U of Illinois Urbana-Champaign	15,903	765	5%	63	8%	41	196
U of Iowa	8,441	187	2%	48	26%	39	244
U of Kansas	9,250	312	3%	64	21%	48	174
U of Kentucky	8,197	372	5%	64	17%	47	228
U of Louisiana Lafayette	5,282	815	15%	78	10%	54	188
U of Louisiana Monroe	2,368	559	24%	61	11%	45	163
U of Louisville	5,253	562	11%	74	13%	61	193
U of Maine Orono	3,849	56	1%	37	66%	30	159
U of Maryland College Park	11,738	1,230	10%	87	7%	64	270
U of Maryland Baltimore County	4,297	494	11%	20	4%	0	117
U of Maryland Eastern Shore	362	314	87%	4	1%	0	6
U of Massachusetts Amherst	9,079	387	4%	51	13%	39	212
U of Memphis	4,552	1,235	27%	85	7%	62	190
U of Miami	4,166	294	7%	76	26%	62	137
U of Michigan	12,028	716	6%	77	11%	55	268
U of Minnesota Twin Cities	12,277	553	5%	60	11%	37	279
U of Mississippi	5,138	498	10%	97	19%	64	185
U of Missouri Columbia	9,613	486	5%	73	15%	58	246
U of Missouri Kansas City	434	53	12%	14	26%	0	84
U of Montana	3,964	35	1%	19	54%	13	133
U of Nebraska Lincoln	8,339	184	2%	54	29%	34	231
U of Nevada Reno	4,600	99	2%	63	64%	57	192
U of Nevada Las Vegas	9,755	714	7%	58	8%	44	202
U of New Hampshire	4,533	83	2%	30	36%	24	74
U of New Mexico	6,277	217	3%	58	27%	39	193
U of New Orleans**
U of North Carolina Asheville	1,311	29	2%	9	31%	0	75
U of North	3,367	453	13%	14	3%	0	98
Carolina Greensboro
U of North	4,025	166	4%	15	9%	0	126
Carolina Wilmington
U of North	6,582	540	8%	79	15%	60	269
Carolina Chapel Hill
U of North	6,440	637	10%	22	3%	0	100
Carolina Charlotte
U of North Texas	8,668	958	11%	65	7%	44	124
U of Northern Iowa	4,173	156	4%	45	29%	34	174
U of Notre Dame	4,393	158	4%	50	32%	41	241
U of Oklahoma	8,931	417	5%	83	20%	58	218
U of Oregon	7,063	137	2%	48	35%	38	155
U of Pennsylvania	1,257	66	5%	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
U of Pittsburgh	7,302	535	7%	76	14%	54	203
U of Portland	1,076	25	2%	9	36%	0	83
U of Rhode Island	4,251	210	5%	52	25%	35	160
U of Richmond	1,506	64	4%	23	36%	20	127
U of San Francisco	1,782	83	5%	13	16%	0	101
U of South Alabama	2,938	366	12%	17	5%	0	80
U of South Carolina Columbia	7,389	775	10%	81	10%	59	208
U of South Florida	9,728	982	10%	74	8%	56	176
U of Southern	7,788	384	5%	65	17%	47	213
California
U of Southern	4,248	1,010	24%	88	9%	66	168
Mississippi
U of Tennessee Chattanooga	2,771	494	18%	66	13%	54	151
U of Tennessee Martin	2,203	290	13%	53	18%	41	142
U of Tennessee Knoxville	9,444	678	7%	76	11%	53	196
U of Texas Arlington	6,457	666	10%	23	3%	0	100
U of Texas Austin	15,689	541	3%	65	12%	51	216
U of Texas El Paso	4,999	166	3%	50	30%	40	117
U of Texas San Antonio	8,448	578	7%	18	3%	0	87
U of Texas Pan American	6,953	30	0%	5	17%	0	60
U of the Pacific
U of Toledo	6,314	661	10%	50	8%	39	154
U of Tulsa	1,332	95	7%	68	72%	49	160
U of Utah	8,601	66	1%	5	8%	4	26
U of Vermont	3,832	38	1%	4	11%	0	110
U of Virginia	6,029	461	8%	66	14%	47	241
U of Washington	11,163	328	3%	49	15%	39	217
U of Wisconsin	1,572	20	1%	8	40%	0	94
Green Bay
U of Wisconsin	12,609	324	3%	63	19%	48	234
Madison
U of Wisconsin	8,719	419	5%	10	2%	0	105
Milwaukee
U of Wyoming	3,853	55	1%	34	62%	24	172
US Air Force Academy	3,612	139	4%	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
US Military Academy	3,601	186	5%	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
US Naval Academy	3,646	223	6%	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
Utah State U	5,418	53	1%	31	58%	23	107
Valparaiso U	1,369	54	4%	4	7%	0	80
Vanderbilt U	3,016	201	7%	61	30%	49	154
Villanova U	3,159	115	4%	50	43%	32	143
Virginia Commonwealth U	6,436	957	15%	20	2%	0	68
Virginia Military Inst	1,265	66	5%	45	68%	29	151
Virginia Tech	12,276	590	5%	69	12%	56	200
Wagner C	692	64	9%	24	38%	15	115
Wake Forest U	2,021	128	6%	69	54%	53	186
Washington State U	8,213	238	3%	58	24%	41	190
Weber State U	4,626	68	1%	33	49%	26	164
West Virginia U	9,985	366	4%	53	14%	47	176
Western	2,960	211	7%	77	36%	54	175
Carolina U
Western	5,327	322	6%	48	15%	38	189
Illinois U
Western	5,581	393	7%	49	12%	33	188
Kentucky U
Western	9,240	421	5%	37	9%	31	175
Michigan U
Wichita State U	3,082	155	5%	13	8%	0	110
Winthrop U	1,423	353	25%	22	6%	0	112
Wofford C	177	12	7%	4	33%	4	36
Wright State U	5,365	511	10%	11	2%	0	91
Xavier U	1,475	102	7%	11	11%	0	95
Yale U	2,720	193	7%	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
Youngstown State U	4,227	392	9%	39	10%	29	144

*These institutions provided incomplete data on undergraduate enrollment to the NCAA.

**These institutions did not report information in most categories because of damage from Hurricane Katrina.

The eight Ivy League colleges and the U.S. service academies did not report data for athletes because they do not offer athletics scholarships.