Winning in college sports is hard enough, but things are about to get even more difficult for coaches and players at USM.
While I was in New York City this past week at a journalism convention, Columbia University revealed their plan to do away with student loans.
Columbia isn’t the first college in country to use their large endowment for this purpose: they are the latest in a growing nationwide trend.
Programs like the one introduced at Columbia take a look at the parents’ annual contribution and require the student to pony up whatever the FAFSA deems practical.
The rest is then supplemented, not with loans, but with grant money sliced from the school’s endowment.
But Columbia is Ivy League and Division I – how does this impact USM?
Well, truth is, it’s not just Columbia. It’s also Bowdoin and Colby, our Division III foes, who are making college more affordable to those who aren’t in the top tax bracket.
And it’s not just the Bank of America and sleazy student loan corporations who are going to take a hit – places like USM, who are constantly trying to lure prospective students and student-athletes to their campuses, are going to be affected as well.
Think about it for a second: if a coach recruits an athlete at place like Bowdoin or Colby and the cost is going to be even remotely comparable to USM (supposing that he or she also has adequate grades and test-scores), is there really any question where that athlete is heading in the fall?
Probably not.
Don’t get me wrong, I love USM as much as the next person, but I wouldn’t want to be the assistant coach trying to make the sales pitch to a star athlete with a solid academic footing and desirable skills on the playing field.
On a brighter note, not all schools have billion dollar endowments.
And lucky for USM, schools in the Little East Conference fit into that category.
But the fact of the matter is that succeeding at the national level is bound to become more difficult. And having some of the best Division III teams in Maine could become a thing of the past if USM doesn’t find a way to compete with these new and attractive policies.
But not everyone can get into a school like Colby or Columbia, right?
Right.
And this raises another precarious situation that USM coaches and administrators will have to deal with.
A recent New York Times investigation adds new depth to the discussion: according to the report, Harvard has been accepting students with less-than-Ivy League credentials.
And while more of the country’s best students are getting into the schools eliminating loans (Harvard, Princeton, Swarthmore and Amherst among them), it is also true that there are plenty of students who still cannot get into USM.
These students, sometimes great athletes, are funneled to schools with lower admission standards like Husson or Thomas.
This leaves USM somewhere in the middle – not overly attractive to student-athletes with strong academic backgrounds; sometimes unattainable for those who aren’t UMaine system material.
Ultimately, this means that things are going to get harder for USM sports and that coaches are going to have to adapt to new challenges by marketing the school to a new demographic of students.
Whether this means admitting more students on a conditional basis or trying to conjure up some sort of endowment, I am not sure, but the heretofore-remarkable recruiting trends at USM might have rough seas ahead.