20 scholarships at $70K per year each plus coaches and supporting salaries plus travel expenses plus recruiting budget. A generous estimate of incremental ticket revenue (excludes concessions) would be $300K/year, based on Wisconsin women's hockey, which is the attendance leader. 2,200 fans per game, 18 or so home dates per season, a general admission ticket is $7 (about half that, per game, for season tickets) and, of course, student tickets are less.

I'm not opining on "go/no go" just highlighting expenses. And if they added another men's non-revenue sport to match (such as wrestling), the annual expenses of course would be that much higher (not sure how many college wrestling scholarships are allowed).

I know the athletic department is charged the fully loaded cost of tuition, room, and board; but the university's marginal cost of having scholarship athletes is much lower. 18 additional students would not cause the university to add class sections, instructors, or infrastructure. Notre Dame would absorb the additional students into existing classes; so the marginal cost of the tuition part of the equation is near zero - books and other supplies.

electronic now in large part. I'm using my freshman daughter at Clemson for that data point, but I suspect ND is the same. She didn't have a single physical book freshman year. In most cases, she didn't pay to have an electronic copy either -- although she likely was supposed to. As an aside, you also can't sell or buy used books anymore either because of this -- which is a negative to some extent and of course if you prefer paper you have to print.

Food is the hard cost ND has per body they let go free. Even there, they cook more food per day than people eat -- allowing for some margin per meal. Thus, you could argue that short of adding 100's of extra students, even food is not really a true incremental cost.

The infrastructure, doorms, electriity, etc. is all a constant whether those extra 18 hypothetical people do or don't exist.

Now, to invent a sport and a roster that never existed before out of thin air there are other costs outside of the student cost -- coaches, travel, etc. Those are incremental costs. However, this thread seems to be debating the mythical cost of a scholarship to a college. The reality is the education, room and board part is essentially zero for scholarship athletes. That same money was being spent with or without them.

ND sets a number of undergraduate students it wants (and has room for). Any scholarship athlete taking the spot of a regular student is an opportunity cost. Namely, that another student would be paying $70,000 a year for that spot. If you add 18 more available spots, none of that changes.

(The fact that most students get financial aid is irrelevant entirely because those funds come from a completely different source and are discretionary...ND can give or not give need-based scholarships as it sees fit).

So scholarship "slots" actually DO cost the university $70k per year in tuition, room & board it would've had from someone else had that athletic scholarship not existed.

1. That Notre Dame is 100% full at all times, that there is not room for any more students in classes.

2. That Notre Dame can predict to the last student how many of the people Admissions accepts will enroll rather than working with a range of the number of accepted students who will enroll. Therefore there is not an empty bed or room on campus.

But there is room for a few more students in almost every class. The marginal cost of adding the 26th student to a 25 person class is the cost of the textbook.

The percentage of accepted students who choose ND over other schools that have accepted them varies every year... varies within a tight range, but varies nonetheless. 2,000 might accept one year and 2,400 might accept the next year (example numbers, not data from Admissions). The admissions model leaves some room for an unusually high acceptance rate, so there are empty beds almost every year. Unless every bed on campus is full, the marginal cost of room and board is the cost of filling an otherwise empty bed, not zero but not the fully loaded cost of room and board.

I remember a couple of years in the 1970s that were so full that upperclassmen were forced off campus, but a lot of dorm capacity has been built since then.

look, I’m not being hostile or mean, but your arguments just are not accurate.

It is always possible to make room for one more student at ND. It is by definition never physically full. It is only logically full -- an artificial number where they decide to not allow others in, but not tied to physical space. They can by definition always make a senior move off campus, so it never is full. But, it virtually never comes to that because there is always attrition during a year, rooms opening up, and my freshman year they used every single study lounge in Grace Hall to hold 6 per floor, 11 floors -- for example.

There's a much higher percentage of students living off campus now than before too -- upwards of 10% now versus 1-3% circa 1989. The point being it is even easier now than before to shift people off campus if needed.

to play women's hockey.

Also, dorms are at capacity ... and with the mandatory 3 years of on campus living going on line this fall, dorms will have much less flexibility.

No one is arguing that adding sports won't cost money (hence the term "non-revenue" sports)

Our aspirational peer, Stanford (according to Jenkins) offers 36 varsity sports (16 for men, 20 for women). Notre Dame offers only 26 (13 for men, 13 for women).

Obviously, Notre Dame can afford it, so this shouldn't be about the money.

Women's hockey scholarships could allow more for baseball for example? Or all the men's sports fully funded to the max allowed for their sports? Could more scholarships go to Men's Hockey, for example?

I know at one time there were multiple half scholarships for some sports to sort of bridge the gap for folks. Might there be the possibility to make them full with WHockey coming online?

ND has the max allowable, coaches might slice and dice them differently to make things work.

This is one of the reasons Ivy League schools aren't that disadvantaged in many Olympic sports.

Baseball has an NCAA limit of 11.7 scholarships. A school can give 11 full scholarships and one 70% scholarship, 22 half scholarships and two 35% scholarships, or any other combination it chooses as long as it doesn't exceed the limit.

With such a small number available compared to the roster size, baseball programs don't give many full scholarships. A few of the top players who might get full ride offers, but not many.

NCAA Scholarship Limits

(linked source below that says 20 scholarships).

I think the "ND can afford it so it shouldn't be about the money" is not compelling at all. There are plenty of factors. Personally, I hope they don't add it (and a corresponding new men's sport). Why? Assuming they do not want to increase undergraduate admissions, they'd be taking valuable admissions spots from the thousands of very qualified kids who are turned away every year, including legacies.

That cost alone doesn't make it worth it to me. Growth, growth, growth in the number of scholarship sports shouldn't be an objective in and of itself.

• Click here for link at http://www.scholarshipstats.com/hockey.html

Having the money isn't the reason for adding the sport, it is to point out that it shouldn't be a hindrance for adding. Also in your cost analysis, it is likely that those same women on the hockey team would be getting some portion of that money even if there wasn't a hockey team.

You could have used these same arguments when women's basketball was a club sport - when men's lacrosse was a club sport. Becoming a varsity sport was the catalyst for these teams. Whose to say that wouldn't happen for women's hockey? Money is not the obstacle, people who don't want to expand opportunities or think cost should dissuade having these teams or those that "don't like women's hockey" (the small sample on this board are in favor)

I'd venture to say that most athletes not playing football or basketball could get into ND on their own merits - playing a varsity sport may give them the nod where resumes are equal. I don't think they are taking many spots from other "qualified" students. Besides, I'd rather have more well-rounded student body then the way the direction the student body is headed.

• Click here for link at http://www.scholarshipstats.com/ncaalimits.html

But I definitely disagree on a couple of your points.

It would seem clear that internally sports are charged full value for their scholarships, because non-athlete need based money comes from different pools of money entirely, including donor based scholarship funds and presumably some small percentage of the endowment.

And I totally disagree that most scholarship athletes outside of football and basketball would’ve been admitted to ND anyway. The quality of students being turned away is amazing, and we are not just talking about bookworm dorks. I’m sure many of our athletes are smart and good or even great students. Did they all average 33-35 on ACT?

be very interested in supporting additional sports if the pool of students is likely to increase socio-economic diversity. The big help in my view is that the athletes go to ND (or another D-1 school) instead of a random third tier college they can afford (or no college at all).

Those other amazing students will be just fine.

Silly kids with silly dreams, better off elsewhere.

deserving upper middle class white kids who will be fully capable of attending (Marquette, BC, Villanova, State U, etc.) and having successful careers thereafter. 25 out of the 12,000+ well-qualified applicants who don't get accepted.


My point is there will be thousands of well-qualified upper middle class white kids who don't get in regardless of whether ND adds a sport or two.