Association for Institutional Research
Enhancing Knowledge. Expanding Networks.
#22Title: NCAA Division III Financial Aid Annual Electronic Reporting Requirement Prepared: August, 2004 Type: Mandatory Report (for NCAA Division III schools only) Summary The NCAA Division III members have adopted an annual electronic reporting process, which requires all Division III institutions to submit unit record financial aid data for all their freshmen and incoming transfer students, in order to compare the financial aid packages of student-athletes with those of all other students. Current Status The NCAA is collecting an optional division-wide pilot report for academic year 2003-04, but reporting will become mandatory in 2004-05. After the pilot year, submission of data is required by the terms of an institution's NCAA membership agreement, and penalties or loss of certain membership privileges are possible in the event of non-compliance. Background and Rationale. The NCAA Division III members overwhelming adopted Convention Proposal No. 56 at the winter 2004 conference. Its purpose is to develop a data-driven monitoring process to maintain the spirit and integrity of NCAA Bylaw 15.4.1, which seeks to ensure that financial aid packages for student-athletes are comparable to those for non-athletes. According to Bylaw 15.4.1: "The composition of the financial aid package offered to a student-athlete shall be consistent with the established policy of the institution's financial aid office for all students and shall meet all of the following criteria:
Report Requirements. The NCAA has a password-protected Web-based "Financial Aid Data Management System" (FADMS) to collect institutional data reports and to deliver preliminary and final analytical reports. The report will require unit-record information for ALL full-time, first-time students who entered the institution during the academic year. The report cohort will contain:
Note that the NCAA cohort looks at all full-time entrants throughout the academic year, and the cohort will typically differ from the fall-only cohorts used for IPEDS/NCAA graduation and persistence rate reporting. Data Elements and Report Submission. A file meeting NCAA's specifications can be uploaded in a tab-separated text format to the FADMS site. Other options include submission of the report to the NCAA as an e-mail attachment, or by CD-ROM. The report elements include:
To simplify reporting, the NCAA has dropped initial proposals to include in the report demographic elements such as gender and ethnicity, and academic outcomes elements such as (SAT scores, high school class rank, and high school grade-point average). Delivered Reports (downloadable in Adobe Acrobat format)
All reports will focus primarily on gift-based aid, where any discrepancies between athletes and non-athletes are most likely to occur. Implications for Institutions Most institutions will need to coordinate across several offices to compile the required data. Most of the work will fall upon financial aid offices and athletics departments, but institutional researchers and information services offices may be called upon to help develop the initial report and underlying data collection systems. According to NCAA tutorials, "Athletics Departments are strongly encouraged to establish an electronic accounting system to identify student-athletes by the year they entered the institution." (Some institutions may wish to use the NCAA report as a foundation upon which to develop more comprehensive financial aid reports for other internal analyses.) Procedures to ensure the confidentiality of the data were reviewed and approved by the NCAA Research Review Board. The NCAA will maintain the confidentiality of data on servers available only to the NCAA research staff. A unique identification code assigned by the institution will be used to identify individual student records. (This code should explicitly not be the student's Social Security number or regular student identification number.) Once reporting becomes mandatory, institutions might need to reference these student codes in the event the NCAA initiates a review to "justify" apparent differences in aid packaging for athletes and non-athletes. The NCAA will also identify each institution by a unique code within its server. Any reported data will be aggregated to an appropriate level, including suppression of cells with fewer than three records within need categories or sport-by-sport breakdowns. Additional documents concerning confidentiality for the report will be posted to the NCAA Web site. However, institutions need to maintain their own standards for internal confidentiality of the data. The NCAA has not yet established criteria to define what constitutes "acceptable variance" between the financial aid packages of Division III student-athletes and non-athletes. It has not yet developed a review and enforcement process for institutions that are deemed not to meet "acceptable variance" standards. These issues will be resolved after reviewing the results of the pilot data submissions. The NCCA will offer a one-time honorarium of $1000 to institutions participating in the pilot. The honorarium will be offered directly to institution CEOs for use at their discretion. Timeline May 14, 2004 - NCAA memo announcement of pilot data collection to Division III institutions June 15, 2004 - NCAA memo to CEO with institution password for access to Financial Aid Data Management System (FADMS) November 1, 2004 - Deadline for submission of final file for pilot study; final reports may be downloaded shortly thereafter FAugust 1, 2005 - Effective date of mandatory full report and review process; standards for "acceptable variance" of aid packages and enforcement provisions to be determined upon review of pilot study Additional Resources
Authors: Coordinated by the Higher Education Data Policy Committee. All opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Association for Institutional Research. |