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Dashboard project gains support in Division III

By Gary Brown
NCAA.org

The Division III Management Council backed a “dashboard indicators” program at the behest of presidents who seek more accurate data to benchmark their institutional spending against selected peer groups.

The program, supported at the Council’s spring meeting in Indianapolis on Monday and Tuesday, involves reconfiguring data already being submitted through the NCAA revenue and expense reporting program into comparison categories such as conference affiliation, public vs. private, or student-body graduation rates that give presidents a more accurate picture of how their schools compare with similar institutions.

About 80 percent of Division III schools already have supplied usable data in recent revenue-and-expenses collection efforts. All schools must submit data because of the federal Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act, but not all institutions choose to report those data to the NCAA via the revenue and expense reporting program.

The Management Council, which includes about a dozen athletics directors, supported the presidents’ desire to obtain more accurate data upon which to inform decisions but is sensitive to whether the dashboard project creates additional work. A feedback component built into the project will help find out. The dashboard project isn’t expected to be an administrative burden for staffs already using the revenue and expense reporting program since it involves existing data.

Schools that have not participated in the NCAA revenue and expense reporting program would have to provide the NCAA with athletics and finance information if they want to use the dashboard project for their own benefit. However, participation in the dashboard project is voluntary. NCAA staff will compile dashboards based on data submitted and make them available for presidents who wish to use them.

In previous meetings, presidents have supported the dashboard project for its ability to provide a graphic comparison of the annual financial picture of an institution’s athletics program, highlighting trends over time.

The actual “dashboards,” or comparison categories, would include:

• Institutions that sponsor football to those that do not.
• Public and private designations.
• Quartiles of proportion of student-athletes to undergraduate enrollment.
• Quartiles of the number of sports sponsored.
• Student-body graduation rates.
• Conference affiliations.

Other more customizable comparisons are possible. Peer-comparison data are provided so that an individual institution’s reporting remains confidential.

Division I currently requires all institutions to submit data for inclusion in the dashboard system. Division II offers optional reporting, which yields near 100 percent participation. While there is a revenue component to the dashboards in Division I and to some extent in Division II, the project in Division III would be entirely about expenses.

A report of findings from the pilot will be presented to the Division III Presidents Council and to the Division III membership at the 2012 NCAA Convention. The Presidents Council could authorize that the pilot become a permanent program by the spring of 2012.

Presidential leadership

The Management Council also heard from the Division III Administrative Committee, which acting on behalf of the Presidents and Management Councils suggested sponsorship of a legislative package for the presidential grouping at the 2012 Convention that includes a number of items related to presidential leadership from the 2008 white papers:

• Amend the philosophy statement to emphasize that Division III athletics are primarily focused on the undergraduate educational experience in a four-year period.
• Amend the philosophy statement to clarify that initial and continuing eligibility standards are best left to institutional and conference autonomy.
• Solidify the division’s position on playing season length by amending the philosophy statement to enumerate a commitment to supporting a student-athlete’s right to meaningful participation in non-athletic pursuits as a method of enriching the overall educational experience.
• Designate significant financial aid regulations as division dominant, which requires a subsequent two-thirds majority vote to amend.
• Designate the redshirting prohibition as division-dominant.
• Establish key playing season legislation (such as maximum length of the playing season or the total number of contests) as division dominant.

The Presidents Council will be asked for feedback on these ideas at its April 27 meeting. Other committees in the governance structure will be asked to comment, as well. If these concepts gain momentum, they could end up as legislative proposals for the 2012 Convention cycle.

Other highlights

In other action at the Division III Management Council’s April 11-12 meeting, members:

• Heard about the potential for the NCAA enforcement staff to start including allegations of an institution’s “failure to monitor” or a “lack of institutional control”in future major infractions cases that involve violations of Division III financial aid rules.
• Agreed with a recommendation from the Division III Strategic Planning and Finance Committee to establish a Division III drug education and testing strategy that retains the status quo championships testing program and makes funds available for campuses to conduct enhanced education and testing at the institution’s discretion. This aligns with membership feedback, including roundtable discussions at the 2011 Convention, on how best to proceed following the division’s drug-testing pilot program conducted over the last two years. The educational program shall focus on effectively partnering with the student affairs departments and coaches communities, and will prioritize alcohol as the most significant substance-abuse issue in the division. Specific implementation strategies will be developed this summer, as will options for fund distribution.
• Charged the NCAA staff with developing activation resources for the previously approved $600,500 budget for the 2011-12 Identity Initiative. Those resources include extending the $1,000 institutional and conference credit line from the Division III purchasing website (about 60 percent of institutions and conferences have already used their allocation). Allocations for 2010-11 expire August 31.
• Recommended sponsorship of legislation for the 2012 Convention requiring that institutions be core in only one conference for purposes of automatic qualification. The one existing umbrella conference (the Middle Atlantic Conferences) would be allowed to retain its current structure.