Before you bust out cake and party hats, consider all the unintended consequences of the law. It’s far from a rosy picture.
Our friends over at the College Sports Council are marking Title IX’s birthday by offering a sneak peak at a new study they are releasing later this summer. I’ll have more info/links as they become available, but for now here’s the skinny from the CSC press release:
The preliminary findings of a study of NCAA participation and scholarship data conducted by the College Sports Council (CSC) shows that in gender symmetrical sports, which have teams for both male and female athletes, women are accorded far more opportunities to compete and earn scholarships at NCAA Division 1 schools, the highest level of intercollegiate athletics.
“After nearly four decades after the passage of Title IX, it’s time to erase all institutional gender discrimination, and that includes bias against boys,” said CSC Chairman Eric Pearson. “Current NCAA policies cultivate the disparity between male and female scholarship opportunities. In sports where there are symmetric teams the scholarship limits should be the same. The CSC calls on the NCAA to equalize scholarship limits in all sports which have teams for both male and female athletes.”
Later this Summer, the CSC will release a comprehensive study on athletic opportunity in NCAA Division I in “gender symmetric” sports where both men and women compete. Preliminary findings of this study include:
-At the NCAA Division I level, there are far more women’s teams (2,653) than men’s teams (2,097), denying thousands of male athletes the opportunity to compete.
-Overall in “gender symmetric” sports, there are far more scholarships available for women (32,656) than for men (20,206).
-By far, the most difficult athletic scholarship to obtain at the Division I level is in men’s volleyball, where there are 489 high school athletes for every full NCAA scholarship.
UPDATE: Here is a link to the press release. And here is a link to some supporting charts.