Institutions also may satisfy the participation requirements for Title IX if they have a history of expanding their athletics programs for women, or if they can demonstrate that they are fully accommodating the athletic interests and abilities of their female students. The first part, called the ''substantial proportionality'' test, compares the proportion of female undergraduates with the proportion of female athletes. The civil-rights office does not determine whether an institution passes or fails that test based on a specific gap in the percentages, but historically, Title IX experts have considered a difference of five percentage points or fewer to be sufficient. In a letter sent to universities last summer, Norma V. Cantu, the department's Assistant Secretary for civil rights, said the Office for Civil Rights would allow a deviation of up to one percentage point from strict proportionality, absent non-discriminatory factors. Put simply, if 40 per cent of the athletes at an institution are women, they should receive at least 39 per cent and no more than 41 per cent of athletics-scholarship aid.
Women appear to be faring quite well in that area, according to their institutions' reports.
An additional 148 institutions were putting too much money into women's athletics scholarships. And 100 institutions were allocating too few dollars to women's athletics scholarships. But one also has to take into account, when looking at the data, that we have found there are some problems in the count of athletes. The Chronicle asked institutions to supply unduplicated head counts of athletes along with their reports, but only 44 did so. The gender-equity reports indicated that only seven of the 44 were in compliance on the scholarship requirement.