can. But often these coaches are forced to recruit with three
additional burdens placed on them:
- The institution’s financial aid award packaging formula,
- The recruiting objectives of the coach, and
- The combined recruiting and enrollment philosophy of
the institution for which they coach.
Colleges Operate Like Businesses
Most institutions use the awarding of financial aid as a tool to
encourage potential students to enroll at their college. Financial
aid is a powerful marketing tool used to remain or become com-
petitive in the bidding war among colleges for worthy students.
Fundamentally, here’s how it works: each institution creates
a budget (very few colleges publish theirs) that is required to
deliver the level of educational services desired by the institu-
tion’s administrators. The institution’s administration calculates
how much money is required to deliver the desired educational
services while keeping the college solvent. Generally, college
administrators fashion tuition policies to accomplish those two
interwoven objectives.
The money required to keep the college operating on
a sound financial basis comes from a number of different
sources. In addition to other sources of funding, the most
important source of funds related to the mission of this guide:
tuition, fees, room, board, and other expenses charged to stu-
dents enrolled in any college.
Most institutions calculate non-student funding resources
(i.e., endowment, state funds, if applicable, billable use of facili-
ties, donations, etc.) available to the institution in the fiscal
year. The amount of non-student funding is subtracted from
the budget. The remainder of the budget must be generated
16 The Sports Scholarships Insider’s Guide