Intercollegiate Athletics: Four-Year Colleges' Experiences Adding and Discontinuing Teams
Published: 2001-03-08T00:00:00

Fast Facts:

Highlights:
section_title: What GAO Found
paragraphs: The number of women participating in intercollegiate athletics at four-year colleges and universities increased substantially between school years 1981-82 and 1998-99, while the number of men participating increased more modestly. The total number of women's teams increased by 3,784 teams, compared to an increase of 36 men's teams. In all, 963 schools added teams and 307 discontinued teams since 1992-93. The two factors cited most often as greatly influencing the decision to add or discontinue teams were the need to address student interest in particular sports and the need to meet gender equity goals and requirements. Schools that discontinued men's teams also found the need to reallocate the athletic budget to other sports. Colleges and universities that discontinued a team typically took three months or less between originating the proposal and making the final decision. Most schools informed members of the campus community of the possibility that the team would be discontinued, and most held meetings with campus groups before making the final decision. Most schools offered to help affected athletes transfer to other schools, and students receiving athletics-related financial aid continued to receive financial aid for at least some period after the team was disbanded. Schools that were able to add one or more teams without discontinuing others used various strategies to increase athletic program revenue and contain costs. Some schools relied on the institution's general fund, while others used private sources and athletic facility rental fees.

section_title: Letter
paragraphs: About 400,000 American undergraduate college and university students  participate in intercollegiate athletics each year. During the last 2 decades,  the number of college athletes and the sports in which they participate  have changed markedly. Colleges and universities across the country have  added many sports teams and discontinued others. In response to these  changes, the Congress included provisions in the Higher Education  Amendments of 1998 that require GAO to study participation in athletics,  including schools’ decisions to add or discontinue sports teams. While the  mandate also required information on high school and 2-year college  athletics, because of limited readily available information and the difficulty  of collecting comparable information from these schools, as agreed with  your offices, we focused only on 4-year intercollegiate athletics. This report  answers the following questions:  How did the number of men’s and women’s intercollegiate sports  participants and teams at 4-year colleges and universities change in the  2 decades since the1981–82 school year?
How many colleges and universities added and discontinued teams  since the 1992–93 school year, and what influenced their most recent  decisions to add and discontinue teams?
How did colleges and universities make and implement decisions to  discontinue intercollegiate sports teams?
When colleges and universities added teams, what types of strategies  did they use to avoid discontinuing sports teams or severely reducing  their funding?
To determine changes in the numbers of participants and teams at 4-year  colleges and universities, we obtained statistics from the two largest  national intercollegiate sports associations for 4-year colleges and  universities—the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and the  National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA). Information for  these schools covered 18 years—school years 1981–82 through 1998–99.  Although these data are unverified, they are widely used by researchers to  study this topic. To gather information to respond to the other questions,  we sent a questionnaire covering the 1992–93 to 1999–2000 school years to  athletic directors at all 1,310 4-year schools that belong to one of these two  associations. We received responses from 91 percent of these schools. For  detailed information on schools’ experiences in attempting to add sports  teams without substantially reducing opportunities for other athletes, we  also visited four colleges and universities. For details about our scope and  methodology, see appendix I. Our work was done between February and  December 2000 in accordance with generally accepted government  auditing standards.
subsections: section_title: Background
paragraphs: Although intercollegiate sports may bring to mind nationally televised  football and basketball games, 4-year schools’ intercollegiate sports  programs vary widely, from small programs involving fewer than 10 teams  with expenditures of less than $1 million to large programs with more than  900 student-athletes and expenditures in excess of $50 million. At many  schools, intercollegiate athletic competition serves primarily to meet the  needs of student-athletes—to give them opportunities to develop their  athletic ability as they pursue their courses of study. Schools also view  intercollegiate athletics as a means of recruiting prospective students. At  schools with large athletic programs, sports serve as an important focal  point for students, faculty and staff, alumni, surrounding communities, and  the national television audience.
Typically, schools with the largest number of athletic programs and  facilities belong to Division I-A of the NCAA, and those with smaller  programs are members of NCAA Divisions II or III or the second major  national collegiate association, NAIA. Most 4-year postsecondary  institutions with intercollegiate athletic programs participate in one of  these two associations. NCAA, the larger, administers intercollegiate  athletics for over 1,000 4-year (baccalaureate degree-granting) schools.  Division I member schools are further divided into three categories—I-A, I- AA, and I-AAA—with those that have larger football programs generally  placed in I-A and those without football programs in I-AAA. Division I-AA  schools sponsor football but are not subject to the spectator attendance  requirements that apply to Division I-A schools. In April 2000, NAIA  consisted of 330 member institutions. The NAIA does not have divisions  except for basketball and football, which each have Divisions I and II.
Although no federal monies fund intercollegiate sports programs, federal  involvement has arisen in part as a result of civil rights legislation. For  example, at schools receiving federal financial assistance, all education  programs and activities—including intercollegiate athletic programs—are  subject to title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits  discrimination on the basis of sex. Federal regulations implementing title  IX require that men and women be provided equitable opportunities to  participate in intercollegiate athletics, and equitable scholarships, facilities,  equipment, supplies, and other benefits. The Department of Education’s  Office for Civil Rights assesses schools’ compliance with these  requirements. To comply with requirements concerning equitable  opportunities to participate in intercollegiate sports, schools must meet  any one of the three following criteria, which Education refers to as parts  of a three-part test: (1) intercollegiate-level participation opportunities for  male and female students are provided in numbers substantially  proportionate to their respective enrollments, or (2) the institution can  show a history and continuing practice of program expansion that is  demonstrably responsive to the developing interests and abilities of the  members of the underrepresented gender, or (3) it can be demonstrated  that the interests and abilities of the members of the underrepresented  gender have been fully and effectively accommodated by the present  program.
section_title: Women Made Substantial Gains in Intercollegiate Sports Participation
paragraphs: Since the early 1980s, the number of women participating in intercollegiate  sports has increased substantially. Although male athletes still outnumber  their female counterparts, the growth in their programs has been much  smaller and the number of women’s teams now exceeds the number of  men’s teams. The percentage of male undergraduates who participate in  intercollegiate athletics is essentially the same as it was in 1981–82, while  the percentage of women has increased considerably.
subsections: section_title: Gap Between Female and Male Participants Has Narrowed
paragraphs: The rapid growth in women’s participation in intercollegiate sports since  1981–82 has narrowed the gap between genders (see fig. 1). The number of  women in intercollegiate sports increased by 81 percent (from 90,000 to  163,000 participants) and the number of men increased by 5 percent (from  220,000 to 232,000 participants) between 1981–82 and 1998–99. The growth  in women’s participation was fastest during the early 1980s and in the  1990s. Men’s participation also grew in the early 1980s, but peaked in  1985–86. Since then, it decreased modestly, then fluctuated within a narrow  range.
The growth in the number of women athletes may reflect, in part, the rapid  increase in women’s undergraduate enrollment. From 1981–82 to 1998–99  women’s undergraduate enrollment grew by 30 percent, compared to 6  percent for men. However, women’s participation also grew as an overall  percentage of women undergraduates. Women athletes made up 3.9  percent of women undergraduates in 1981–82 and 5.5 percent in 1998–99. In  contrast, the portion of undergraduate men participating in athletics  remained relatively steady, starting and ending the period at 9.3 percent.
The trends in the number of women participants varied by sport. For  example, table 1 shows that the biggest increase in the number of women  participants—about 18,000—was in soccer. Though participation increased  in most sports, five sports reported decreases in participation. The biggest  decline occurred in gymnastics, with nearly 700 fewer women gymnasts in  1998–99 than in 1981–82.
In men’s sports, increases and decreases were more evenly balanced, with  increases in the number of participants in 14 sports and decreases in 12. As  shown in table 2, the greatest increase in numbers of participants occurred  in football, with about 7,200 more players. Football also had the greatest  number of participants—approximately 60,000, or about twice as many as  the next largest sport. Wrestling experienced the largest decrease in  participation—a drop of more than 2,600 participants.
section_title: Women’s Teams Outnumber Men’s Teams
paragraphs: Though the number of male participants was greater than the number of  female participants in 1998–99, there were 330 more women’s teams than  men’s teams. The average women’s team had fewer athletes than the  average men’s team. From 1981–82 to 1998–99, the number of women’s  intercollegiate sports teams increased by 66 percent (from 5,695 to 9,479  teams). Most sports saw an increase in the number of teams, with the  largest increase occurring in women’s soccer, where the number of teams  rose from 80 to 926. The greatest decrease occurred in gymnastics, where  the number of teams fell from 190 to 90 (see table 3).
Half of men’s sports saw a decline in the number of teams. Two sports had  no change and the remaining sports (nearly half) had an increase in the  number of teams. As with women’s sports, the largest increase came in  soccer (135 new teams). Football, the sport that saw the largest increase in  the number of participants, saw a decrease of 37 teams, mainly from NAIA  schools. Gymnastics, fencing, and rifle saw the largest percentage decline  in the number of teams. The largest decrease in the number of teams was in  wrestling (171 teams) (see table 4).
section_title: Experiences Adding and Discontinuing Teams Varied Among Schools With Different- Sized Athletic Programs
paragraphs: About 80 percent of schools added one or more women’s sports teams  during the 1992–93 to 1999–2000 period, and more than two-thirds did so  without discontinuing any teams. Student interest in a particular sport was  often cited as an influence behind many of these decisions. Gender equity  considerations also often influenced decisions to add women’s teams and  discontinue men’s teams, particularly at schools with large athletic  programs. The financial impact of adding or discontinuing teams varied  widely by size of program and by sport.
subsections: section_title: Most Schools Added Women’s Teams Without Discontinuing Teams
paragraphs: Overall, among the 1,191 college and universities responding to the  questionnaire, 963 added at least one team and 307 discontinued at least  one (see fig. 2). However, of the 948 schools that added one or more  women’s teams, 72 percent did so without discontinuing any teams. Only  about 16 percent of all respondents neither added nor discontinued a team  from 1992–93 through 1999–2000. In total, schools added nearly three times  as many women’s teams as men’s teams during this period—1,919 teams for  women, compared with 702 for men. They discontinued more than twice as  many men’s teams—386 teams for men, 150 for women.
Schools with smaller programs were more likely to add men’s teams. Only  about 3 percent of the schools with the largest intercollegiate athletic  programs (NCAA Division I-A) added one or more men’s teams, compared  with 39 percent for NCAA Division III schools and 54 percent of NAIA  schools (see table 5).
section_title: Addition of Teams Often Influenced by Student Interest, Among Other Factors
paragraphs: The level of student interest was the factor schools cited most often as  greatly or very greatly influencing their most recent decision to add both  men’s and women’s teams (see fig. 3). Overall, 52 percent of the  respondents that had added a women’s sports team indicated that student  interest was a great or very great influence in the decision, and nearly as  many schools (47 percent) cited the need to meet gender equity goals or  requirements. Other factors cited less frequently when adding a women’s  team included the availability of adequate facilities and sufficient  equipment, the growth in the number of teams to compete against,  community interest, and enough improvement in a club team’s skill to  compete at the varsity intercollegiate level.
The factors that most influenced recent decisions to add women’s teams  varied by the size of a school’s intercollegiate athletic programs. For  example, respondents from NCAA Division I-A schools compared to  Division III schools more often cited gender equity considerations (82  percent versus 35 percent) and community interest (35 percent versus 12  percent) as a great or very great influence. Division III schools cited the  availability of adequate facilities and sufficient equipment (30 percent,  compared with 24 percent in Division I-A.) Both types of schools cited  student interest about as often (60 percent versus 55 percent).
For men’s sports, the pattern of which factors most influenced schools’  decisions to add a team was somewhat different, particularly with regard to  gender equity goals or requirements. As was the case for the addition of  women’s teams, student interest was the factor cited most often (49  percent) as influencing the addition of men’s teams. After student interest,  the factor cited most often was the availability of sufficient facilities and  adequate equipment (32 percent), followed by community interest (23  percent). Gender equity considerations, an influential factor for adding a  women’s team, was cited by only 4 percent of schools that had added a  men’s team.
section_title: Student Interest Also Among Factors That Influenced Decisions to Discontinue Teams
paragraphs: The level of student interest was the most often cited factor in schools’  most recent decisions to discontinue men’s and women’s teams (see fig. 4).  Among the 272 responding schools that discontinued a men’s team, 91 (33  percent) cited lack of student interest as a great or very great influence, 83  (31 percent) cited the need to meet gender equity goals or requirements,  and 82 (30 percent) cited the need to reallocate budget resources to other  sports.
Factors affecting decisions to discontinue men’s teams varied with the size  of a school’s program. Among schools with large intercollegiate athletic  programs, gender equity considerations more often figured as a great or  very great influence. At NCAA Division I-A schools, for example, a majority  (54 percent) of the respondents discontinuing a men’s team cited gender  equity considerations as a great or very great influence. Insufficient student  interest in the sport was not often cited; only 6 percent of respondents  cited it as a great or very great influence. In contrast, among NCAA Division  III respondents, the absence of sufficient student interest in the sport was  the most often-cited factor (44 percent cited it as a great or very great  influence). The need to reallocate resources to other sports was the next  most often-cited factor (cited by 26 percent), followed by decreases in the  budget and gender equity considerations (each cited by 21 percent).
Decisions to discontinue a women’s team were generally most often driven  by the level of student interest. Of the 123 schools that discontinued one or  more women’s teams, 58 percent cited the lack of student interest as a  great or very great influence. The next most often-cited influences were the  team’s inability to compete at the desired level and the absence of adequate  facilities and sufficient equipment.
section_title: Adding and Discontinuing Teams Had Widely Varied Impact on Athletic Program Expenditures
paragraphs: The most recent addition of an intercollegiate team increased the average  school’s total intercollegiate expenditures by an estimated 6 percent, and  the most recent discontinuation of a team reduced expenditures by 4  percent. In general, schools with larger intercollegiate programs  experienced smaller percentage changes in their expenditures, as shown in  table 6. For example, adding a women’s team at the NCAA Division I-A level  increased costs an average of 3 percent, compared to 5 percent for NCAA  Division III and 9 percent for NAIA. The comparable averages for recent  additions of men’s teams were 2, 8, and 13 percent.
The effect of adding or discontinuing a team also varied by sport (see table  7). For example, schools estimated that adding women’s soccer typically  increased expenditures by 6 percent, while adding football teams increased  expenditures by an average of 31 percent. Discontinuing men’s tennis  decreased expenditures by an average of 2 percent, while discontinuing  football decreased expenditures an average of 24 percent.
section_title: Schools Typically Discontinued Teams Quickly and Assisted Athletes in the Transition
paragraphs: The 307 responding schools that discontinued a team during the 1992–93 to  1999–2000 period typically spent 3 months or less between making the  proposal to discontinue a team and making a final decision. Most schools  informed the campus community of the proposed discontinuation before  the decision was final. Once the decision was made to discontinue a team,  however, most did not provide a written explanation for their decision.  Most schools held meetings to discuss the proposal with groups in the  campus community. Schools with larger athletic programs more often  included other interested parties, such as alumni or members of booster  clubs. Affected athletes usually continued to receive athletic financial aid  after the sport was discontinued.
subsections: section_title: Time Spent Making the Decision Was Generally Less Than 3 Months
paragraphs: Most decisions to discontinue a team were considered and implemented  within a few months following the initial proposal, according to the  responses from the colleges and universities concerning the team they  most recently discontinued during the 1992–93 to 1999–2000 period. The  median of the reported amount of time between making such a proposal to  reaching a final decision was 2 months. In 38 percent of cases, both the  proposal and the final decision came in the same month. In about 5 percent  of cases, the schools took more than a year to reach a final decision.
The amount of time before the team stopped participating was also brief.  For about one-third of the schools, the team had already stopped  participating before the final decision to discontinue the sport was made.  For another 26 percent, participation stopped during the month the final  decision was made. For another 17 percent of the respondents,  participation ended by the third month following the final decision. Only  about 5 percent allowed sports teams to continue to play for a year or more  past the time when a final decision was made.
In most cases the proposal to discontinue the team came from within the  athletic department, although college administrations were a common  source at schools with smaller athletic programs. About 60 percent said the  proposal originated with the athletic department. At NCAA Division I-A  schools, the figure was 83 percent. For NAIA and NCAA Division I-AAA  schools, about one-third of the proposals originated from the school  administration. For example, at NAIA schools that discontinued a sport,  the athletic department initiated 46 percent of the proposals and school  administration initiated 38 percent. Similarly, at NCAA Division I-AAA  schools that discontinued a sport, athletic departments initiated 50 percent  of the proposals and the school administration initiated another 36 percent.
section_title: Members of Campus Community Were Usually Involved Before the Final Decision Was Made
paragraphs: Most colleges and universities (186 of the 307 schools discontinuing a  team) informed the campus community of the possibility of discontinuing  the team before the decision was final. Large schools, such as those in  NCAA Division I-A, were most likely to use a press release to inform the  campus community of the possibility of discontinuing the sport. NCAA  Division III schools more often provided the information by mail to  individuals or used other means such as meetings with athletes and staff.
Most of the schools discontinuing a team (64 percent) informed affected  athletes of the decision in the month it was finalized. About 20 percent of  these schools indicated that they informed the affected athletes of the  decision during the 3 months preceding the final decision. About 10 percent  of these schools indicated that they informed the affected student athletes  of a decision in the months following a final decision. Typically these  schools informed the athletes within a month or two.
Overall, less than half (41 percent) of schools that discontinued a sports  team provided a written explanation. This varied somewhat by the size of  schools’ athletic programs. NCAA Division I-A and I-AA schools were least  likely to provide a written explanation to affected athletes; about one- quarter of them did so. Members of NCAA Divisions II and III and NAIA  were more likely to provide a written explanation; about half did so.
More than two-thirds of the schools that discontinued intercollegiate  athletic teams did so without allowing an appeal of the decision. The  proportion of schools allowing an appeal varied little by size of schools’  athletic programs—from a low of 25 percent among Division I-AA schools  to a high of 36 percent among Division I-AAA schools. Several schools  described their appeals process as a meeting with the athletic director.  Most schools, however, described appeals as meetings with school  administrators or organizational units outside the athletics department. For  example, schools allowed student-athletes to appeal to the dean of  students, athletic council, the school’s president, or the board of trustees.  One respondent described an appeal involving an open forum at which all  interested parties could speak; others provided opportunities for a written  appeal.
section_title: Assistance to Athletes Often Included Continued Financial Aid and Help in Transferring to Another School
paragraphs: About 80 percent of the schools (170 of the 212 responding schools that  discontinued a team)—aside from Division III schools which are prohibited  from providing athletic financial aid—indicated that they allowed their  student-athletes to continue receiving aid even though the team was being  discontinued. This was most often the case at NCAA Division I schools;  continued aid was available at 90 percent of these schools. This was less  often the case at Division II schools, where 72 percent of schools indicated  that student athletes could continue to receive aid. For about 86 percent of  the schools that continued to provide assistance, the aid was available until  the athlete graduated. At most of the rest, the aid was made available for up  to 1 year. Among all NCAA and NAIA schools discontinuing a team, 86  percent assisted affected athletes in transferring to another institution’s  intercollegiate athletics program. However, affected athletes who remained  enrolled at the school did not necessarily have the opportunity to compete  in that sport at the club level. Only 41 percent gave the affected athletes  that opportunity.
section_title: Schools Pursued Creative Strategies to Build Athletic Programs Without Discontinuing Teams
paragraphs: A majority of the 1,191 school officials reported that they have been able to  add one or more teams without discontinuing others. They used a variety of  strategies to do so, including obtaining funding from nonschool sources  and finding ways to contain costs. The four schools we reviewed in depth  used strategies that ranged from fundraising to awarding fewer  scholarships.
subsections: section_title: Schools Relied More on Raising Revenue Than Cutting Costs
paragraphs: The 693 schools that added one or more intercollegiate athletic teams over  the 1992–93 to 1999–2000 period without discontinuing a team did so more  often by obtaining additional revenue than by containing costs and  reallocating revenue. Sources of funds tended to vary with the size of the  intercollegiate athletic program. As shown in table 8, NCAA Division I-A  schools tended to rely on revenue from other sports and from outside  sources. Schools with smaller programs, particularly those in NCAA  Division III and NAIA, most often used additional funds from the  institution’s general fund. In some cases, they reallocated existing  resources by, for example, trimming travel expenses for all teams and using  the savings to help fund the new team.
section_title: Selected Schools Used a Range of Creative Strategies to Avoid Discontinuing Teams
paragraphs: For more detailed information concerning how schools added teams  without discontinuing opportunities for athletes on other teams, we visited  four colleges and universities to learn how they enhanced their athletic  programs. We selected these four because they represented various sizes of  schools and athletic programs, and different regions of the country (see  table 9). They used combinations of innovative strategies that, as the  survey reported, placed greater emphasis on increasing athletic revenue  than on cutting costs in other programs. Fundraising strategies included  renting out athletic facilities, and cost-containment approaches included  trimming administrative expenditures.
Though all four schools have unique characteristics, directors from each  athletic program articulated factors that were key to facilitating successful  program expansion without discontinuing teams. Table 10 lists these  factors. All four schools cited the first three factors and two of the four  schools cited the last factor. One of the athletic directors acknowledged,  however, that a “one size fits all” approach may not be feasible and that  these approaches may not apply to other schools.
Athletic directors also identified several specific revenue-generating  approaches for adding teams without discontinuing others.
Donations. The smaller Division I-A school revitalized a business  relationship with the chief executive officer of a local private firm. This  individual’s prominence, in turn, encouraged financial support from the  rest of the business community. Substantial donations from fans and locally  based corporations also enabled the school to add new teams and build  facilities such as a new football stadium, a sports complex with a softball  field, a track, a soccer field, and a planned Olympic-sized pool. Similarly, at  the larger Division I-A school, large donations helped the school to add  teams and increase the capacity of its football stadium, build a new  basketball and ice hockey arena, and upgrade locker facilities.
Rental fees. Another revenue-generating strategy was to rent out athletic  facilities for other purposes and use the fees to expand the athletic  program. For example, the football stadiums or basketball arenas at the  Division I-A schools were used to host cultural and entertainment events  such as concerts, or to serve as venues for prominent athletic events such  as a World Cup soccer match. In addition, the smaller Division I-A school  took advantage of its proximity to a prominent venue by letting the public  use the football stadium parking lot to accommodate overflow event  parking; the annual proceeds of $200,000 were all allocated to the women’s  program. At the Division III school, local high school teams rented the  football field for practice and special athletic events.
In addition to focusing on raising revenue, one athletic director told us that  it was important to maintain flexibility in the use of funds available to the  athletic department. For example, the larger Division I-A school’s athletic  department requires that any earnings in excess of a specified rate of return  on endowment funds designated for specific teams be available for general  intercollegiate athletic department uses. This gives the athletic director  greater flexibility in allocating resources.
All four schools we visited also took various steps to reduce current or  avoid incurring additional expenditures. These included the following  strategies:   Recruiting most prospective student-athletes via telephone rather than   Denying requests for some teams to be elevated from club to varsity   Replacing a retiring full-time faculty member with a coach who also  assumed other administrative duties,   Limiting the size of the football team roster,  Trimming administrative costs,   Not awarding the maximum number of scholarships allowed, and  Limiting team travel outside the region to one trip every 2 to 3 years to  minimize travel expenses.
Another cost-containment strategy involved establishing partnerships  between the school and the local community. Such partnerships reflected  the schools’ ability to capitalize on the unique characteristics of their  geographic location. For example, the larger Division I-A school planned to  undertake a cost-sharing project with the city and local school district to  build a boathouse on a local river that would accommodate rowing teams  from the university, high school, and general public. The smaller Division I- A school teamed with a local hospital offering a nationally recognized  sports medicine program. Through the arrangement, the hospital provides  free services, including a portable medical facility at sports events and  physical screenings for each athlete. The Division III school formed a  partnership with a locally based professional men’s basketball team. Under  the agreement, the team was able to practice at the school’s basketball  courts in exchange for funding a new hardwood floor for the courts and  renovations to the men’s and women’s locker rooms.
section_title: Agency Comments
paragraphs: We provided a draft of this report to the Department of Education for  comment, and it did not provide comments.
We are sending copies of this report to the Honorable Roderick R. Paige,  Secretary of Education; appropriate congressional committees;  representatives of NCAA and NAIA; and other interested parties. Please  call me at (202) 512-7215 if you or your staff have any questions about this  report. Key contacts and staff acknowledgments for this report are listed in  appendix II.
section_title: Scope and Methodology
paragraphs: As agreed with your offices, we focused our review of intercollegiate  athletics on addressing the following questions:   How did the number of men’s and women’s intercollegiate sports  participants and teams at 4-year colleges and universities change in the  2 decades since the1981–82 school year?
How many colleges and universities added and discontinued teams  since the 1992–93 school year, and what influenced their most recent  decisions to add and discontinue teams?
How did colleges and universities make and implement decisions to  discontinue intercollegiate sports?
When colleges and universities added teams, what types of strategies  did they use to avoid discontinuing sports teams or severely reducing  their funding?
To determine the number of men’s and women’s intercollegiate sports  participants and teams, we gathered participation statistics from the two  largest 4-year intercollegiate athletic associations—the National  Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) and the National Collegiate  Athletic Association (NCAA). Some schools were members of both  associations. For example, of the 787 NCAA members and 515 NAIA  members in 1981–82, 117 were dual-membership schools. By 1998–99,  NCAA had 1,041 members and NAIA had 339 members, 61 of which were  dual members as of April 1999, according to the NCAA. Based on the  number of teams and average team sizes, we estimated that these schools  accounted for about 3 percent of male and 2 percent of female participants  in 1997–98. Because dual-membership schools report their participation  statistics to both associations, we counted their statistics only once to  avoid double-counting the numbers of teams and participants. The adjusted  participation statistics were used to calculate net change in number of  teams, number of participants, and participation rates between 1981–82  and 1998–99. To estimate rates of participation, we divided the total  estimated number of participants for both associations by the estimated  total number of full-time undergraduates enrolled at all 4-year institutions.  To the extent that an individual student participated in more than one  sport, our calculation of the number of participants may be overstated  because these individuals are counted more than once in the statistics. In  addition, some 4-year institutions are not members of either NAIA or  NCAA, and they were excluded from our analyses. Although we did not  verify the accuracy of the statistics provided by the NCAA and NAIA, they  are the best available data and are widely used by researchers to study  intercollegiate athletic participation.
To respond to the other three questions, we developed and administered a  questionnaire to gather information from athletic directors at all 4-year  colleges and universities that were members of either the NAIA or NCAA.  We pretested a draft questionnaire at six schools and subsequently revised  it based on their comments. In May 2000, we mailed the final questionnaire  to 1,310 institutions including 326 NAIA members and 1,040 NCAA  members (both active and provisional members.) This included 56 4-year  colleges and universities that were members of both NCAA and NAIA. By  October 2000, we had received 1,191 usable questionnaire responses for an  overall response rate of 91 percent. In some cases, however, respondents  did not respond to all applicable questions.
The questionnaire asked athletic directors for the total number of women’s  and men’s intercollegiate sports teams added and discontinued during the  1992–93 to 1999–2000 school-year period. When calculating the number of  new teams added, we excluded teams that had not yet begun participating  in intercollegiate competition by the end of the 1999–2000 school year.  Similarly, when calculating the number of teams discontinued, we excluded  teams whose last day of intercollegiate competition was after the end of the  1999–2000 school year. We asked each school that added or discontinued a  team to respond to additional questions concerning only the most recently  added and most recently discontinued men’s and women’s sports teams.  We reviewed athletic directors’ questionnaire responses for consistency  and in many cases contacted them or their staff to resolve inconsistencies,  but we did not otherwise verify the information provided in the  questionnaire responses.
To identify types of strategies that colleges and universities used to avoid  discontinuing sports teams or severely reducing their funding, we used the  questionnaire to collect information on how schools paid for new teams.  We analyzed these responses for schools that had added some teams  without discontinuing others. To get some specific examples of how  schools augmented their athletic program without eliminating teams or  severely reducing their funding, we visited four selected colleges and  universities that were NCAA member schools. We chose these schools in  order to achieve variation in a number of characteristics, including  geographic diversity, whether the school was public or private, size of the  athletic department budget, whether the school awarded athletic  scholarships, whether sports were profitable, and whether the school  sponsored football. At each school, we interviewed the athletic director  and other staff involved in administering the athletic program and toured  the athletic facilities.
section_title: GAO Contacts and Staff Acknowledgments
subsections: section_title: GAO Contacts
section_title: Staff Acknowledgments
paragraphs: In addition to the individuals named above, Joel I. Grossman, Elsie M.  Picyk, Meeta Sharma, Sharon M. Silas, Stanley G. Stenersen, Jason M.  Suzaka, and James P. Wright made key contributions to this report.
section_title: Related GAO Products
paragraphs: Gender Equity: Men's and Women's Participation in Higher Education  (GAO-01-128, Dec. 15, 2000).
Interscholastic Athletics: School District Provide Some Assistance to  Uninsured Student Athletes (GAO/HEHS-00-148, Sep. 12, 2000).
Intercollegiate Athletics: Comparison of Selected Characteristics of Men's  and Women's Programs (GAO/HEHS-99-3R, June 18, 1999).
Intercollegiate Athletics: Status of Efforts to Promote Gender Equity  (GAO/HEHS-97-10, Oct. 25, 1996).
Intercollegiate Athletics: Compensation Varies for Selected Personnel in  Athletic Departments (GAO/HRD-92-121, Aug. 19, 1992).