A Forbes story this month suggest that despite a common criticism from observers, studies show that Title IX requirements are not causing schools to cut men’s sports.
Title IX is a federal law passed in 1972 that outlaws sex-based discrimination in educational programs. Despite that broad umbrella, public discussion of Title IX almost always centers on athletics, which are considered educational programs when tied to high schools or universities.
In the late 1970s, officials created a three-prong test to help enforce Title IX within the sphere of school-based athletics. An educational institution must meet at least one of the three prongs of the test. Here are the three prongs, as laid out by the Forbes piece:
- Proportionality Test: “provides a composition of athletic opportunities to men and women that is proportional to the gender composition of the student body.”
- Program Expansion Test: “demonstrate consistent program expansion for women.”
- Accommodation of Interest Tests: “show accommodation of student interests or abilities”
Many fans and observers suggest that in order to have equal opportunities for men and women, schools are cutting men’s sport opportunities rather than increasing opportunities for women. But the Forbes story runs through several key studies suggesting that may not be the case.
The Forbes piece runs through the logic behind the argument that Title IX is hurting men’s sports. Women’s sports are typically lower-revenue than their men’s sport counterparts, which could cause schools to cut non-revenue men’s sports to make financial space for women’s programs. But the Forbes piece cites a study from Daniel Marburger and Nancy Hogshead-Makar (an Olympic swimmer in 1984) noting that Division III schools had actually added men’s programs, while the cuts to non-revenue men’s sports were happening at the Division I level. Another writer, Katie Lee, argues that non-revenue men’s sports are being cut to funnel more money into revenue men’s sports, not to create space for women’s sports.
The Forbes piece also suggests that even if schools are out of compliance with the first prong of the test – as many schools still are – they can still gain Title IX compliance by showing progress in expanding women’s sport opportunities or showing a lack of interest in specific women’s sports among their student body. That leaves schools a way to earn Title IX compliance without cutting men’s sports to offset women’s programs equally.
So could the problem be solved if there were more women in sport administration roles making the budget cut decisions? There have always been clever options to keep a program alive, all that require a lot of work, but are there. Yet the “easiest” route taken is to cut male programs. There was an AD who is no longer at an institution that expected all sports teams to fund raise half of their budget. Sounds like a lot of work but she was invested in it and not cutting any programs.
Then again more female ADs would mean we are taking away from men.
The problem isn’t Title IX, it’s that Football is much more popular than swimming. High school participation for HS football is way higher than boy’s swimming and there is money to be had in NCAA football. More girls participate in swimming than boys, so it honestly makes sense for there to be more women’s programs.
Do you all really think the D1 programs that cut men’s swim teams would keep their women’s teams around if it wasn’t for Title IX? The men who complain about the extra women’s teams are like little kids who want to break a toy because they can’t play with it.
Athletic directors blaming Title IX for cuts are taking one of the oldest pages… Read more »
While true for swimming, that isn’t necessarily true for all sports. I don’t have #s but I would be surprised if there are more HS women playing basketball, track and field, golf, water polo, etc. I’d be very pleased to hear otherwise, as getting more women into those activities is great!
You are correct though that football is the culprit. From purely a scholarship perspective the issue with football is that there is no female equivalent. The highest female scholarship #s is 65 fewer than football.
There are a whole slew of issues related to revenue, taking mens sports away for more money for other mens sports, etc. But when it comes to scholarship numbers, football being an enormous… Read more »
The 2016-2017 participation data:
http://www.nfhs.org/ParticipationStatistics/PDF/2016-17_Participation_Survey_Results.pdf
More boys than girls playing basketball (about 25% more). Similar in track and field. Golf is about twice as many boys as girls. Water polo is pretty close – only about 400 more boys than girls, and fewer boys teams than girls teams (that gap has been closing quickly – probably this year or next year, girls will surpass boys).
Note that this data isn’t perfect. If the sport isn’t officially sponsored by a state federation, and there are a few known reporting errors (it’s a survey done by state associations and ADs, not an exact science). For example, it greatly underestimates the number of boys volleyball players,… Read more »
Our team was reduced in size by about 25% when I was in college. We were told that it was due to Title IX regulations. The entire program may not have been cut, but the 9 guys who were cut were absolutely devastated.
That was the AD’s decision to reduce the size of the men’s swim team instead of adding more opportunities for women.
The cut he size of he men’s team because they were forced to come up with more opportunities for women. That costs money, like every sport except men’s basketball, football, and occasionally hockey.
Hot take:
Disband all college athletics. Funnel that money into more academic scholarships as well as funding/outreach programs for under-served k-12 schools (i.e. colleges making an early investment in children so that they can afford to go to college on academic merit without being a revenue-slave to the NCAA). Bloated university admin is slightly less bloated, taxpayers/students no longer have to subsidize the 97% of athletic departments that are hemorrhaging money, etc. Hopefully schools cut tuition as a result, but let’s not get unrealistic.
Use any left over money to build a large rocket, herd all the former athletic directors and NCAA executives inside, then launch the rocket into the sun.
The last thing we need is more people going to college. Universities are overrun with students who lack the foundational educational skills necessary to succeed in an academic environment, or the discipline to study on their own. Universities are forced to teach remedial math and English already, making college more like the 13th grade than an elite academic institution.
Too bad I can’t up-vote more than once;)
I agree, completely. I don’t think our stances are mutually exclusive, though. As it stands now, education is highly correlated with income, and college athletic scholarships are one way for those in low income families to help pay for tuition. It could be argued that my proposal to do away with NCAA athletics would disproportionately affect those families. There are a lot of students who have the discipline, who aren’t afraid of the grind, etc., who can’t go to college because of money or a lack of guidance. That’s why I proposed the funding and outreach programs in lieu of athletic scholarships: so colleges can identify and provide opportunities to students who would do well, but are afraid of the… Read more »
Ah crap this is basically saying a lot of the stuff I just did in my other comment.
I’m halfway through this book right now: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/malcolm-harris/kids-these-days/9780316510868/ and it’s really harps on how these days, companies do very, very, very little on-the-job training; we incentivized them not to take on that cost. It’s now a responsibility borne by the state (public schools) and the individual students (paying for college, to a lesser extent unpaid internships).
In conclusion, everything is bad but not the kids.
Maybe, but yours was much more concise. I ramble, and I’m not always good about cutting down the result before posting.
That book looks like it’s right up my alley. Gonna have to pick it up!
I just finished it! It was good, but the end is very depressing. (Spoilers? Below?)
it basically ends with just “yup, all that stuff is bad but we also prolly can’t fix it. bye!”
Get outta here with that “kids these days lack discipline!” crap.
I think I basically agree with your overall point – fewer people going to 4 year colleges would probably be good – but I get there in a wildly different way.
Kids today are much smarter than they’ve been in the past, but college is prohibitively expensive and often not necessary for a ton of jobs.
Millions upon millions of males grow up playing basketball. Maybe a million females do. Yet more girls get a college basketball scholarship than guys? I believe something like Title IX is needed but the current version definitely needs revision.
I have 2 sons and 3 daughters – I want my girls to have same opportunity to play sports in college (although I do advocate abolishing all college athletics, but that is argument for another time). The solution is abolishing football, that violent 11 minute game that damages young people’s brains, and open more scholarship to men in other (much more beautiful) sports (waterpolo, volleyball, etc).
Nonsense. Men’s sports suffer far more than women’s when universities seek to comply.
Seek to comply? Required to comply. Men are walked off their teams. Women’s sports are created (eg Harvard women’s rugby) to maintain compliance.
I believe it’s highly unlikely either side is 100% accurate. To start, I doubt I’ll ever be convinced the DI to DIII comparison is valid. There are too many variables, not the least of which is scholarship offerings. The point that Title IX isn’t the cause because schools are funneling more money to other Men’s sports and not into women’s may be true in part, but it certainly isn’t 100%. One other prong for Title IX is the dollars spent on each gender being equal. Even if schools fulfill other prongs for compliance, having a large disparity between dollars spent between genders still causes institutions headaches with protesters and and Title IX proponents…as it should. If a school cuts a… Read more »
Don’t know about how FULLY true the Forbes piece is though. Maybe half true.
There are more women than men in college these days however it is not seen as a problem to be adressed. Absolute equality is impossible I guess but I suspect that if there were more men than women in college, it would be seen as a huge problem to adress. Another example is the campaign to get more women into the STEM field even if women dont seem interested in that field and no equivalent campaign to get more men into the nursing field.
So I believe that even if TITLE X is causing men,s program to be cut, it won’t be seen as a… Read more »
Women are interested in STEM. There is systematic bias against women in teaching STEM that discourages them from entering the field, and there are studies to prove it: http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full.pdf+htm
In the most feminist nations in the world aka Scandinavia, the women don’t suffer bias in the STEM field.
In Norway which is very feminist, there are fewer females in the STEM field because women in Norway are just not interested, especially in engineering. And Norwegian feminists have done everything to get the women there interested.
Watch the gender equality paradox on youtube by harald eia.
In fact we see a pattern/ an equation among nations. The more prosperous a nation is, the more free the women are, the more choices they have. This usually leads to less women in the STEM field. It,s a global pattern. The choices women have is caused by a myriad… Read more »
Very good post, Carlo.
Interesting facts from sources that are 5-35 years old.
Not sure how STEM fits this discussion. Outside of MIT dropping their Men’s programs.
Seems like competitive schools individually are actively trying to even out the gender gap in the student body, with male-majority schools admitting women at higher rates and female-majority schools admitting men at higher rates:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/the-gender-factor-in-college-admissions/2014/03/26/4996e988-b4e6-11e3-8020-b2d790b3c9e1_story.html?utm_term=.0fde8cc93f60
Perhaps the overall gender gap problem that you’re referring to then isn’t Title IX issue, but a societal problem that either begins before students reach college or results in them dropping out.