Dive Brief:
- Some former college basketball players who never graduated may find they can obtain scholarships to return to school under a plan from the National Collegiate Athletic Association — though some critics say the support should go even further, according to a story in Inside Higher Ed.
- A few colleges in the NCAA Division I, which includes 351 institutions, offered former basketball athletes the option to return for free starting in August 2019. A NCAA fund will help pay for the support from "limited resource" institutions, based on their athletic department funding and other budget data.
- The rule requires that the colleges pay for tuition, fees and books for men and women basketball students who come back within 10 years, have exhausted all other funding options and meet NCAA academic standards. They must have been enrolled at the school for two years and been on scholarship during their time there.
Dive Insight
For athletes who can't graduate in five years, the NCAA also offers the Degree Completion Award Program that since 1989 have given out more than $30 million, an organization spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed. Athletes must be within 30 semester hours of graduating to be eligible for funds.
Critics, however, say that colleges should perhaps offer athletes "scholarships for life," which about four years ago some colleges began to do. They also charge that too many athletes will be ruled out by the new NCAA requirements and that the group has not calculated how much the scholarships for former students will cost the institutions. One said that student-athletes who are used for fundraising, marketing and enrollment purposes during their college careers should be repaid with free education if they want it.
The NCAA announced the new rule in a package of reforms that seemed to come in response to publicity about kickback schemes in men's basketball. In addition, last November some 43,000 student-athletes, mostly Division I basketball players, won a $208 million settlement that will give them on average $6,000 because the scholarships they received did not pay the full cost of attendance at their institutions. However, according to one report,the money as of June was still waiting to be distributed to former and current student-athletes.
Over the past 14 years more than 1,300 Division I men's basketball players have come back to finish their degrees, according to the NCAA. It includes prominent players in professional basketball such as Michael Jordan and two current top stars, Chris Paul and Russell Westbrook.