View Profile
View Forum Posts
Private Message
View Blog Entries
View Articles
It's hard to find the exact formula that the NCAA provides to determine the stipend, but this story (How do scholarships and stipends work again?) provides a few clues:
Stipends vary from school to school, as well, based on a formula that takes into account the room and board and other standard costs for the average student at the university. So large urban schools will pay a little more -- for example, the room and board of a typical Iowa State student is in the neighborhood of $5000 per semester; at UCLA, it's over $12,000 per semester.
A couple years ago, USC receiver Dwayne Jarrett's monthly housing stipend in Los Angeles was $960 when he was admonished for living in lavish digs with Matt Leinart, mostly paid for by Leinart's father, that cost over $3,800 a month. I don't know the real estate market in Iowa, but I did go to college in the middle of nowhere, so based on my experience I suspect a kid in Iowa State would probably look at a $960 apartment in Ames about the same way Jarrett did the luxury pad in L.A.
USC's monthly stipend is $960 a month?
Where are you going to find an apartment and pay for food for that amount? We're talking college students here, athletes who should be eating a LOT of good food - and might not be cooking at home every night. Laptops, not covered. Cell phones, not covered. And if you have a fancy phone that allows internet access for $30 and upwards a month, there's another $360 a year that needs to be found.
Think about apartments in Boulder on the Hill - easily you can spend upwards of $700 for a room in a house. (I know one family whose son paid that much for a basement apartment last year so he could be near the weekend parties.) Yes, you can find cheaper places, farther away from campus, but then you might need a car and insurance ... out of the same $1000 bucks or so.
I think a lot of us imagine that the student/athletes on scholarship have access to funding that covers everything. But having talked to a few of our CU players lately, it's just not true. Several said they struggle to stay within their means, and fully expect to graduate with a credit card debt needed to pay for what they consider essentials. It's not that CU doesn't cover what they are allowed to cover -- they do -- but the students aren't allowed to earn enough money outside of scholarship funds to cover what they spend.
A cap of $2000 annually on a student's earnings during school is unfair to to athletes who WANT to work and be financially responsible.
